Australian Regional Tourism

In partnership with State and Territory tourism organisations, ART aims to be a unified industry voice for regional tourism advocacy, enabling a collaborative approach to industry development and shared challenges.

In 2022, Australian tourism contributed $143b to our economy. Tourism is one of Australia’s largest export industries, employing nearly 670,000 people across 330,000 businesses. In regional Australia, there are 100,000 tourism-related businesses, and around 57 cents in every visitor dollar is spent in regional areas (year ending September 2022).

Tourism Research Australia reports that nearly half of the nation’s tourism expenditure (46% or $107 billion) occurs in regional Australia. In addition, regional tourism directly employs over half a million people (534,000) in tourism related industries, which is more Australians than mining and more than forestry, agriculture and fishing combined.

Tourism is vital to many regional communities around Australia, and it is important that we continue to advocate for the success of the industry.

CATCH-UP ON THE LATEST INDUSTRY NEWS

BLOG

The Capacity Crunch: Delivering Big Outcomes with Small Teams

In regional LGAs, the scale of expectation rarely matches the size of the team delivering it. My tourism team in the St George Region is…

Eventfolk: Building a Collective Voice for Regional and Rural Events

In this episode of The Tourism Hub Podcast, host Despina Karatzias sits down with Linda Tillman, co-founder of the Australian Centre for Regional Events, to…

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WEBINAR

2026 Marketing Trends with Media Mortar

During this session, Liz Ballantyne from Media Mortar presented what’s trending now, what’s coming next and how brands will engage and grow audiences in 2026. Sharing…

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