The number of international visitors coming to Australia has remained steady despite the tough conditions for tourism globally, according to the latest new tourism figures.

Tourism Australia managing director Andrew McEvoy said the figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics highlighted Australia’s “resilience in the difficult economic climate”.

“Despite the headwind of the global financial crisis and the outbreak of the H1N1 virus Australian tourism managed to break even on international tourist numbers, defying the global downturn last year,” McEvoy said.

“These results show practical plans to lessen the impact of global events on travel to Australia last year have worked to a point.

“Against the odds we saw good growth from a number of our major tourism source markets like the USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, India and China while other markets such as the UK, Germany and New Zealand remained steady.

“However, markets like Japan and Korea, posted significant declines mainly due to local economic conditions.”

The ABS figures revealed that short-term visitors to Australia last year remained steady at 5.6 million with New Zealand, the UK, and the USA the three top sources of visitors.

The figure was just 1700 fewer than in 2008.

The year also saw a record 6.3 million Australia residents heading overseas for short term periods, up from 5.8 million in 2008. The most popular destinations were New Zealand, the USA and Indonesia which accounted for just over a third of all short term resident departures.

Mr McEvoy said while tourism to Australia had produced a better than expected result for 2009, Tourism Australia would continue to work with the industry to return international visitor numbers to growth this year.

“As today’s figures highlight there are bright spots on the horizon and the finish to the year was much stronger than the start,” he said.

“However, it is more than just the visitor numbers that we want to grow and we will remain focused on growing the economic contribution that international visitors deliver to the Australian economy each year.

“Last year international visitors would have injected around $25bn in to the Australian economy, which benefits everyone and provides valuable employment to around half a million Australians.”