There’s no doubt the last 2 years have been very tough on Australia’s tourism industry, but the last 6 months have proven to be the toughest as Australia’s two biggest population centres, Sydney and Melbourne, have remained in perpetual lockdown.

But after a seemingly endless downturn we are finally seeing some early signs that the tourism sector could not only be recovering, but shaping up for a big summer of travel.

While there is still uncertainty around specific dates and restrictions with interstate travel, the rate at which willing travellers are searching for flights has significantly increased as more freedoms are returned to the citizens. To illustrate this, we are going to take a look at search trends for people in Sydney.

The below graph shows the search volume of people in Sydney looking for flights to any destination in Australia.

At its lowest point, just 4,279 searches were performed in a week for people looking to travel domestically from Sydney.

However, in the past 2 weeks as the lockdown has started to recede, there has been a 661% increase in search volumes. This is the best indication we have seen since the pandemic started that people are enthusiastically looking to get back to travelling.