Australians travelled overseas more in January according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
Overall arrivals rose 12.3% from one year ago to 2,383,330 and departures grew 16.3% to 2,031,060.
The number of arrivals was particularly significant as it was the highest arrival number since January last year.
According to the ABS data, most Australians opted for short-term overseas travel in January 2025 with arrivals and departures increasing 17.9% and 10.9% from last year respectively.
The number of local short-term arrivals also increased 10.9% from pre-COVID levels in January 2019. The three leading destinations people were arriving from were New Zealand, Indonesia and Japan.
There were only 12,720 long-term resident arrivals in comparison to 1,544,890 short-term arrivals. The same can be seen with departures with 42,520 long-term departures and 1,041,370 short-term departures.
For visitor arrivals to Australia, the number of trips was 2.9% lower than pre-COVID in January 2019 and China was the largest source country, accounting for 16% of the arrivals.
The state or territory with the most short-term arrivals was New South Wales with 272,580 and the state or territory with the least arrivals was the Northern Territory with 2,580 visitors.
The number of international students dropped 2.5% from the year before 80,830. This is also a 10.4% decrease from pre-COVID levels in January 2019.
