SEPTEMBER KEY FIGURES

		Sep '18	Aug '18 to Sep '18	Sep '17 to Sep '18
		'000	% change	% change
Short-term visitor arrivals
	Trend	780.5	0.3	4.1
	Seasonally adjusted	773.7	-2.3	..
	Original	690.2	..	..
Short-term resident returns
	Trend	926.0	-0.2	4.8
	Seasonally adjusted	917.6	-2.1	..
	Original	974.0	..	..
.. not applicable

Visitor arrivals, Short-term

Resident returns, Short-term

SEPTEMBER KEY POINTS

SHORT-TERM VISITOR ARRIVALS TO AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term visitor arrivals during September 2018 (780,500 movements) increased 0.3% when compared with August 2018 (778,400 movements). This followed monthly increases of 0.5% for July and August 2018. The current trend estimate for arrivals is 4.1% higher than in September 2017.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During September 2018, short-term visitor arrivals (773,700 movements) decreased 2.3% when compared with August 2018 (791,600 movements). This followed monthly increases of 0.2% for July 2018 and 2.5% for August 2018.
• Original estimates: There were 690,200 short-term visitor arrivals to Australia in September 2018.

SHORT-TERM RESIDENT RETURNS TO AUSTRALIA

• Trend estimates: Short-term resident returns during September 2018 (926,000 movements) decreased 0.2% when compared with August 2018 (927,900 movements). This followed a monthly increase of 0.1% for July 2018 and no change of 0.0% for August 2018. The current trend estimate for returns is 4.8% higher than in September 2017.
• Seasonally adjusted estimates: During September 2018, short-term resident returns (917,600 movements) decreased 2.1% when compared with August 2018 (937,300 movements). This followed monthly increases of 0.8% for July 2018 and 1.6% for August 2018.
• Original estimates: There were 974,000 short-term resident returns to Australia in September 2018.

NOTES


FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
October 2018	17 December 2018
November 2018	18 January 2019
December 2018	19 February 2019
January 2019	15 March 2019
February 2019	11 April 2019
March 2019	13 May 2019
April 2019	12 June 2019
May 2019	12 July 2019
June 2019	15 August 2019
July 2019	11 September 2019
August 2019	15 October 2019
September 2019	11 November 2019

DATA NOTES

In July 2017, the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs introduced changes to the incoming passenger card. The change was to capture the main reason for journey for both residents returning, and visitors arriving in Australia. The ABS has noted changes in the distribution of responses to the question on main reason for journey for short-term visitor arrivals in recent months, notably an increase in the number of persons reporting that the main reason for travel was visiting friends and relatives and a decline in the number of persons reporting the main reason was a holiday. From investigations by Home Affairs changes were made to their process of coding main reason for journey from the new incoming passenger card, and to further assist in improving quality the imputation for main reason for journey was reviewed and improved by the ABS.

This release contains overseas movement data which should not be interpreted as 'persons'. See paragraph 7 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.

The statistics in this release have been rounded. See paragraph 33 of the Explanatory Notes for more detail.


INQUIRIES

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