Australia’s Year In Travel 2023: What Were Our Travel Trends?

• Our Favourite Destinations
• Bang for Buck 
• Big Buys 
• Hotel Bookings
• Solo Women Travellers
• Family Holidays 
• Cozy Couples
• Travel Insurance 
• Face-Palm Moments
• How Are we Travelling? 
• Complex Flights
• Cruising
• Touring
• Top Holiday Spots 
• Flock Factor 
• Hottest Overseas Destinations 

The Australian dollar boomed against several foreign currencies in 2023, making your dollar stretch further than usual in these five countries¹:  

• Japan [¥95.14 = A$1]
• South Africa [R11.95 = A$1] 
• Norway [6.97 kr = A$1] 
• Sweden [6.95 kr = A$1] 
• South Korea [₩861 = A$1]  

If you need some yen, rand or krona, our friends at Travel Money Oz have great rates, expert advice, and the world's first same-day delivery (or pickup) for foreign cash!

The northernmost destination booked by Flight Centre customers was Longyearbyen on the Norwegian island of Svalbard. The island and its chief port are well within the Arctic Circle and feature on adventure cruise itineraries between April and September when summer temperatures can reach as high as 7 °C. 

The Southernmost destination our customers visited was Ushuaia, capital of the Tierra del Fuego region in southern Argentina. Summer temperatures there reach a comparatively balmy 13 °C. 

• In Australia we sold 1,401,041 flights of which 20% were one way.
• 7,533 cars were hired - parked bumper to bumper they would stretch from central London out to Heathrow Airport and back again. 
• $81,350 was the biggest overseas hotel booking. 
•  $113,956 was the biggest domestic hotel booking. 
• Despite the average hotel stay being 6 days, the longest stay was a hotel booking for 367 days. 
• The shortest hotel stay was for less than a day. There were lots of them too. 

Just a thought … with so many real Mr and Mrs Smiths in the world, do they all get smirks and raised eyebrows every time they check into a hotel room together? Let’s move on. 

Our top 10 travel destinations around the world based on the number of hotel bookings were: 

1. Sydney 
2. Melbourne 
3. Singapore 
4. Gold Coast 
5. Brisbane 
6. Tokyo 
7. London 
8. Phuket 
9. Auckland 
10. Perth 

Singapore's standout for international stays says a lot about the Lion City's popularity as a long-haul stopover. 

Of these hotel bookings, most people opted for 4-star or 3-star accommodation: 

• 5-star  18% 
• 4-star  55% 
• 3-star  23% 
• 2-star  3% 
• 1-star  1% 

Women travelling solo were our most common type of traveller making up around 25% of our customers. The top 10 destinations they headed to in 2023 were: 

1. London 
2. Bali 
3. Auckland 
4. Athens 
5. Rome 
6. Singapore 
7. Paris 
8. Phuket 
9. Los Angeles 
10. Tokyo 

We saw a growing number of families booking their holidays  with Flight Centre in 2023. Before we dive into our top 10 holiday destinations for 2023, consider this: we booked 3,168 babies on flights this year. Given that the average flight was around 3 hours long, that’s 9,504 hourly games of Peek-a-boo-I-see-you that countless parents/guardians kindly initiated for our benefit. And we thank you. 

Of the families who booked travel with us in 2023, 50% booked flights (or accommodation with their flights), 46% booked holiday packages (many of which included flights) and 4% booked accommodation only. The median age of those making the family booking was 43, and the average length of their holiday was 11 days. 

44% of our family customers travelled to domestic destinations. The top 10 family holiday destinations within Australia were: 

1. Cairns 
2. Gold Coast 
3. Port Douglas 
4. Melbourne 
5. Sydney 
6. Adelaide 
7. Perth 
8. Darwin 
9. Hobart 
10. Heron Island 

56% of our family customers travelled to international destinations. The top 10 overseas holiday destinations were: 

1. Fiji 
2. Hawaii 
3. Bali 
4. Japan 
5. Vanuatu 
6. Maldives 
7. Phuket 
8. Norfolk Island 
9. London 
10. Queenstown 

56% of our customers booking as couples travelled to international destinations. The average value of their bookings was $7,240 and their median trip length was 13 days. The top 10 international destinations visited by couples who booked with us this year were: 

1. UK 
2. Italy 
3. US 
4. Bali 
5. New Zealand 
6. France 
7. Singapore 
8. Greece 
9. Phuket 
10. Spain 

The top 10 domestic destinations visited by our other 44% of couples who booked with us this year were: 

1. Cairns 
2. Gold Coast 
3. Port Douglas 
4. Adelaide 
5. Melbourne 
6. Darwin 
7. Sydney 
8. Hobart 
9. Perth 
10. Hamilton Island, Whitsundays 

Of our customers who wisely invested in travel insurance in 2023, 94% opted for a standard tier of cover while only 6% opted for full peace of mind and took out platinum or gold cover. 

No names, no shame ... these were two of our customers' biggest travel face-palm moments of 2023:

• One customer  was filming a time-lapse from their hotel balcony in Prague on New Years Eve. The wind got up, and their phone dropped four floors. Luckily they were covered by Cover-More.
• Another customer asked us if they could fly from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane ... direct. We don't know if they were running late for work or a wedding.

No matter how much we get irked by a lack of leg room and having to politely hold in our elbows for hours at a time, economy class still reigns supreme. Here's which cabin classes our customers chose this year: 

International Flights 

• Economy 87% 
• Business Class 9% 
• Premium Economy 3% 
• First Class 1% 

Domestic Flights 

• Economy 98% 
• Business Class 2% 

Most international travellers (99.6%) chose to fly to one destination before flying home again. Which means that just a fraction took advantage of the dollars you can save if you opt for multi-stop flights taking in several destinations – you might want to look into that! 

"Complex air" might sound like the awkward atmosphere you experience having taken your first date to a bar only to bump into your ex who's there with your hot personal trainer, but it's actually a term we travel agent types give to great value multi-stop, round-the-world airfares that span countries and continents. 

The longest and most complex air booking we made in 2023 was for a flight itinerary with 13 legs from Brisbane to Sydney then on to Santiago (Chile), Cusco (Peru) and back to Santiago before heading to Buenos Aires. From Buenos Aires this person then flew to Rio de Janeiro and on to London, Lisbon, Casablanca, Doha and Bangkok before returning to Sydney and back to Brisbane.  

That would've been some holiday. Maybe it was booked by someone who couldn't get out of that bar fast enough to jump on a plane going places far, far away ... 

The average age of our cruise customers was 59 years and 6 months. These cruiser-boomers contributed to cruising's increasing popularity through 2023.  Recent research by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) indicates that the volume of people booking cruises globally will exceed the pre-Covid high in 2019 by 6% in 2023 and another 14% in 2024.² 

Cruising comes in all shapes and forms, as do the types of cabins ... sorry ✨ staterooms✨... our cruisers stayed in. Let's have a look: 

• Balcony 48%  
• Interior 21% 
• Outside 11% 
• Suite/Penthouse 9% 
• Other 11% 

Aussies still love homegrown holidays with most cruises booked departing from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.  The top 10 cruise ports our cruisers visited were: 

1. Sydney 
2. Brisbane 
3. Melbourne 
4. Auckland 
5. Adelaide 
6. Honolulu 
7. Athens 
8. Amsterdam 
9. Southampton 
10. Perth 

The biggest cruise booking made this year was $312,647. While it's tempting to assume that this avid cruiser stretched out in style in a Penthouse stateroom, it's more likely this booking was enjoyed by someone having an extended sojourn at sea in modest lodgings. Life on land is so over-rated! 

Of our customers who booked tours in 2023, most were couples (44%), solo travellers (30%) and small groups (21%). The average age of our customers taking tours was 50 and their average spend was $7,180.  

Because Aussies just can't get enough of Buckingham Palace and Big Ben, London naturally topped our list of toured destinations. But that doesn't mean there weren't a couple of South American and Vietnamese surprises. Here are the places where we turned to local experts to show us around the most: 

1. London 
2. Bangkok 
3. Tokyo 
4. Hanoi 
5. Auckland 
6. Cairo 
7. Ho Chi Minh City 
8. La Paz, Bolivia 
9. Lima 
10. Quito, Ecuador 

Aussies holidayed far and wide, home and abroad in 2023. Tropical sand trumped alpine snow. Their top 10 holiday destinations were: 

1. Fiji 
2. Hawaii 
3. Cairns 
4. Tokyo 
5. Phuket 
6. Hakuba, Japan 
7. Bali 
8. Gold Coast 
9. The Maldives 
10. Vanuatu 

Because 2023 was our first uninterrupted, no holds barred, go-(almost)-wherever-you-like year in travel for a while, it's not surprising a few old favourites saw an uptick in visitors. These international destinations attracted the biggest increase of Aussie bookings this year compared to 2022: 

1. Bali up 27% 
2. Phuket up 24% 
3. Auckland up 23% 
4. Paris up 22% 
5. Singapore up 19% 

Which begs the inevitable question: which destinations are we picking to be Aussies travellers' top spots in 2024? - behind London, of course, which has always reigned supreme: 

1. Singapore 
2. Bali 
3. Auckland 
4. Fiji 
5. Hawaii 
6. Tokyo
7. Dubai 
8. Phuket 
9. Bangkok 
10. Rome

So there you have it! In 12 months shaped by open gates and budget restraints, 2023 was a year in travel not just about returning to old habits but seeking out new adventure offerings on the map. 

Be part of travel trends in 2024:

This report is based on the internal booking data we had available to us and covers a time period of 10 October 2022 to 9 October 2023. We’re confident in the quality of our data and every effort has been made to ensure and preserve its accuracy.

^{1. Exchange rates as at 18 October 2023, source: https://www.google.com/finance/} 

^{2. CLIA Passenger Data, 2019 – 2021 and CLIA Cruise Forecast /Tourism Economics (December 2022)}