Kiama takes a quarter of Wollongong's visitors and earns more from each one
Tourism Research Australia publishes a visitor profile for every local government area in the country on one set of definitions, which makes it the only place the Illawarra's two councils can be compared without arguing about method. Wollongong draws 4,114,000 visitors and $999 million. Kiama draws 1,149,000 and $375 million. But per visitor the order reverses: Kiama takes $327 a trip and $198 a night against Wollongong's $243 and $145. These are two different businesses sharing a coastline.
Every figure below is a two-year average for 2023 to 2024, which is how Tourism Research Australia publishes these profiles. The tourism business counts are a different basis and are flagged where they appear. Nothing here is our arithmetic except where it says so.
The two councils, side by side
| Total | Wollongong | Kiama |
|---|---|---|
| Visitors (000) | 4,114 | 1,149 |
| Nights (000) | 4,088 | 1,518 |
| Expenditure ($M) | $999 | $375 |
| Spend per trip | $243 | $327 |
| Spend per night | $145 | $198 |
| Tourism businesses | 2,303 | 304 |
Wollongong is the volume: three and a half times the visitors and two and a half times the expenditure. Kiama is the value: a visitor there is worth about a third more per trip and about a third more per night. Neither of those is a judgement about which council is doing better. They are different products.
Why they come, and it is the clearest difference
| Reason | Wollongong | Kiama |
|---|---|---|
| Holiday | 1,986 | 756 |
| Visiting friends and relatives | 1,488 | 275 |
| Business | 304 | np |
| Other | 336 | np |
np is not zero. Tourism Research Australia defines it as
Data is not publishable as the survey error is too high for practical purposes
, meaning
the survey cannot support a number at that level of detail for that area.
Kiama is holiday-led by nearly three to one. Wollongong is much closer to even, with 1,488,000 people visiting friends and relatives against 1,986,000 on holiday. A city with a university and a large resident population accumulates visitors who are somebody's family, and those visitors sleep in spare rooms rather than in paid accommodation. That is the most likely reason Wollongong's spend per night sits lower, and it is a reading rather than a finding: the dataset reports what happened, not why.
The international columns are not the same product either
| Measure | Wollongong | Kiama |
|---|---|---|
| Visitors (000) | 59 | 13 |
| Average nights | 30 | 6 |
| Expenditure ($M) | $157 | $6 |
| Spend per trip | $2,655 | $485 |
| Spend per night | $88 | $84 |
A thirty night average stay is not a holiday pattern. It is the shape of a university city: long stays, high spend per trip, ordinary spend per night. Kiama's international visitors stay six nights and spend $485. Per night the two are almost identical, at $88 and $84, which is worth noticing because it means the enormous gap in spend per trip is a gap in duration, not in daily generosity.
One number we calculated, so you can check it. Wollongong has 2,303 tourism businesses against Kiama's 304, a ratio of about 7.6 to 1, while visitors are about 3.6 to 1. Dividing published expenditure by published business counts gives roughly $434,000 of visitor spending per business in Wollongong and roughly $1.2 million in Kiama. Both divisions are ours, not Tourism Research Australia's. Treat them as a rough shape rather than a measure of trading health: the business count is a register of firms in tourism-related categories, so in a populous city it captures many cafes and pubs serving residents rather than visitors.
What the business count is, and is not
The counts sit on a different basis from everything above. Tourism Research Australia notes
they are based on selected (tourism) ANZISCs from the ABS in the year ending June 2024
,
a point in time from the business register rather than a two-year survey average. That is why
the note above will not carry any weight about profitability.
Sources
- Tourism Research Australia, Local government area profiles (interactive dashboard; the Wollongong and Kiama profiles each read 29 August 2026): all visitor, night, average night, expenditure, spend per trip and spend per night figures for both areas including the totals; the split of visitors by reason for visit; the international columns; the tourism business counts; and the dashboard's own data notes, being that the data is a two year average from 2023 to 2024, that np means data is not publishable as the survey error is too high for practical purposes, and that the business count is based on selected tourism ANZSIC categories from the ABS in the year ending June 2024.
How we did this. Read directly from Tourism Research Australia's local government area profiles dashboard on 29 August 2026, selecting Wollongong and then Kiama and reading each rendered profile. Every number in the tables is the dashboard's own published figure, including the totals, which we read rather than calculated. The only calculated figures in this article are the two ratios and the two spending-per-business numbers in the box above, and they are labelled there. The reference period is the dashboard's stated two-year average for 2023 to 2024, except the tourism business counts, which it attributes to ABS data for the year ending June 2024. Where the dashboard prints np we have reproduced np and explained it rather than treating it as zero. Both profiles come from the same collection on the same definitions, so no adjustment was applied between them. We have not contacted Tourism Research Australia, either council or any tourism body, and the readings offered about why the numbers differ are labelled as ours.
Spotted an error, or has a newer visitor profile landed? Tell us and we will check it against the Tourism Research Australia profiles and log the outcome.