Three of the four central west councils earn almost exactly the same per visitor. Bathurst is the exception
Tourism Research Australia publishes a visitor profile for every local government area on one set of definitions, which is the only way these four councils can be set side by side without arguing about method. The striking thing is how alike three of them are. Spend per trip runs $485 in Orange, $485 in Dubbo and $488 in Mid-Western. Bathurst sits at $335, with visitor numbers almost identical to Orange's. Dubbo leads on volume and on spend per night. And Orange's international visitors stay an average of 40 nights.
Every figure below is a two-year average for 2023 to 2024, which is how Tourism Research Australia publishes these profiles. The tourism business counts are a different basis and are flagged where they appear. All four profiles come from the same collection, so no adjustment is needed between them, and nothing here is our arithmetic.
The four councils
| Total | Dubbo | Orange | Bathurst | Mid-Western |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visitors (000) | 1,490 | 1,077 | 1,008 | 730 |
| Nights (000) | 1,918 | 1,625 | 1,109 | 1,219 |
| Expenditure ($M) | $722 | $523 | $337 | $356 |
| Spend per trip | $485 | $485 | $335 | $488 |
| Spend per night | $274 | $239 | $219 | $261 |
| Tourism businesses | 627 | 493 | 444 | 387 |
Three councils landing within three dollars of each other on spend per trip is not something we expected, and it is worth saying plainly that we cannot tell you why from this dataset. It may be that inland regional centres of this size simply produce a similar trip: a night or two, a meal, a room. Bathurst is the one that breaks the pattern, on almost the same visitor count as Orange but a third less spending per trip and the lowest spend per night of the four.
Dubbo is the outlier in the other direction
Dubbo has the most visitors, the most nights, the most expenditure, the most tourism businesses and the highest spend per night. It is also the only one of the four with a publishable figure in every reason-for-visit row, which usually means the survey has enough sample there.
| Reason | Dubbo | Orange | Bathurst | Mid-Western |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Holiday | 514 | 382 | 386 | 354 |
| Visiting friends and relatives | 293 | 309 | 325 | 286 |
| Business | 273 | 170 | np | np |
| Other | 410 | np | np | np |
np is not zero. Tourism Research Australia defines it as
Data is not publishable as the survey error is too high for practical purposes
. It means
the survey cannot support a number for that cell in that area, not that nobody came. Bathurst
and Mid-Western have np against business travel, so this table cannot tell you whether they
have less of it than Dubbo and Orange.
Where a number exists, business travel is substantial: 273,000 visitors to Dubbo and 170,000 to Orange. In both, holiday travel and visiting friends and relatives are closer together than they are on the coast.
Forty nights in Orange
| Measure | Dubbo | Orange | Bathurst | Mid-Western |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Visitors (000) | 13 | 9 | 7 | 6 |
| Average nights | 28 | 40 | 14 | 20 |
| Expenditure ($M) | $16 | $25 | $11 | $5 |
| Spend per trip | $1,278 | $2,806 | $1,481 | $864 |
| Spend per night | $45 | $71 | $109 | $43 |
Orange's international visitors stay an average of forty nights and spend $2,806 a trip at $71 a night. That is not a holiday shape; a forty night average is the signature of people staying with someone or working. Bathurst, with a university, shows the opposite pattern: fourteen nights but the highest international spend per night of the four at $109. On these numbers the four councils do not share an international market at all.
This masthead already carries a different Dubbo figure, and the two are not comparable. Our report on the Serengeti Resort projection cites Dubbo Regional Council's data centre, sourced to Tourism Research Australia for the year ending March 2026, giving $452 million of domestic visitor spending in the Dubbo region. The table above gives $722 million in total for the Dubbo LGA on a two-year average for 2023 to 2024. Those are different periods, a different publisher and possibly a different geography, since one says region and the other is the local government area. We cannot reconcile them from these two sources and are not going to try. Use the council's figure when you want the most recent year for the region, and this table when you want the four councils on one basis.
What the business counts are, and are 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 survey average. They count firms in
tourism-related categories, which in a service centre like Dubbo includes a good deal of trade
that serves residents rather than visitors.
Sources
- Tourism Research Australia, Local government area profiles (interactive dashboard; the Dubbo, Orange, Bathurst and Mid-Western profiles each read 29 August 2026): all visitor, night, average night, expenditure, spend per trip and spend per night figures for the four 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.
- Our earlier report on the Serengeti Resort projection, for the Dubbo Regional Council figure discussed in the note above.
How we did this. Read directly from Tourism Research Australia's local government area profiles dashboard on 29 August 2026, selecting each of the four councils in turn and reading the rendered profile. Every number in the tables is the dashboard's own published figure, including the totals, which we read rather than calculated. We have calculated nothing in this article. 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. We have not contacted Tourism Research Australia or any of the four councils, 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.