Wednesday, March 14, 2018 
South Australian Tourism has propelled its international tourism with the soaring visitors numbers per cent in the year to December 2017 to 462,000.
The tourism spending by British tourists increased by a whopping 18 per cent to $1.1 billion, as South Australia promoted its destinations with cricket and koala.
Adelaide took the lion’s share but spending was spread throughout the regions as small operators showed visitors South Austrlai’s “wow” factor.
The UK was the No.1 market for visitors to the state. The cricket fans flocking to the second Ashes Test in December, pushing British visitor arrivals to 74,000 – an increase of 17 per cent on the previous year. They spent $86 million in SA. While on the contrary, the visitors numbers from China jumped by a third to 60,000 as eager arrivals looked for experiences such as selfies with kangaroos and koalas in places including Cleland Wildlife Park.
Other markets that showed solid growth in visitor numbers included Italy (up 21 per cent to 11,000), France (up 8 per cent to 15,000) and New Zealand (up 8 per cent to 40,000).
The spending of the international tourists reaches a record $41.3 billion for the year, an increase of 6 per cent.
Tags: british tourists, koala, south australia, travel trend, UK