Tourism visitation to the entire Great Barrier Reef Marine Park for the 2022-23 financial year was reported at approximately 2.19 million total visitor days (2,193,585).
Whilst visitation in the 2022-23 FY was 10.4% less than the seven-year pre-pandemic average of 2.45 million visits, it is up 63.6% on 2021-22 visitation levels. Increases have occurred across regions and some industry sectors.
The following graphs show tourism visitation to the whole Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and then to the planning areas.
These numbers include full day visits, part day visits, coral viewing activities, scenic flights and visits by those who are exempt from paying the Environmental Management Charge.
Full day visits are the best gauge of the general trend of tourism in the Marine Park. These figures do not include transfer passengers.
Important information about this data
This data is updated biannually following receipt of the Environmental Management Charge returns from commercial tourist operations.
- The number of visitor days to the Marine Park is calculated at follows:
- Full day visits: a day trip of more than three hours.
- Part day visits:
- A trip that is less than three hours, or
- The first day of a trip entering the Marine Park after 5pm, or
- The last day of a trip leaving the Marine Park before 6am.
- Exempt visits: passengers who are not required to pay the Environmental Management Charge.
- Passengers for whom another operator has already paid EMC on that day
- The fourth and subsequent days for passengers on extended charters.
- Free-of-charge visits: the following passengers who do not pay a fee for the provision of a service are not required to pay the Environmental Management Charge.
- Children less than 4 years of age
- People who are engaged in the tourism industry who are visiting the Marine Park for trade familiarisation
- beneficiaries of registered charities
- supervised school groups
- media crews reporting on Great Barrier Reef Marine Park issues.
- Scenic flights: passengers on sight-seeing flights.
- Coral Viewing: a stand-alone activity involving visitors viewing marine life from a semi-submersible or glass bottom boat.
- Note: this does not include glass-bottomed and semi-submersible excursions, which are ancillary to another tourist program.
- These graphs do not include transfer passengers (e.g. ferry passengers)
- The data presented has not been validated.
In previous years, logbook completion rates have been at 100 per cent. The Reef Authority thanks the tourism industry for continuing to submit this information during these challenging times.
- The average percentage of quarterly logbook returns completed between 2020-21 and 2022-23 financial years are as follows:
- 2020-21 financial year was 99.5 per cent
- 2021-22 financial year was 99.2 per cent
- 2022-23 financial year was 96.5 per cent
Visitation Data
The 2022-23 financial year aggregated data for visitation is available in an excel format.
