Lack of unanimity over which countries constitute Oceania, in addition to a lack of a clear consensus among the countries in terms of monitoring arrivals and departures has resulted in somewhat unreliable statistics. Many of the island states collect arrivals statistics through their immigration entry/departure cards, however the information captured varies considerably across the region (SPTO, 2013b).

In total, the region attracts 15.4 million international tourist arrivals (WTTC, 2013a; 2013c). The figure being largely dominated by Australia and New Zealand, with 6.6mln and 2.7mln arrivals respectively (2013b; 2014a).

Travel flows between key Oceanic countries and countries classified as Other Oceania vary vastly. A significant difference can be observed in terms of business travel. The two charts below present business vs leisure travel’s contribution to GDP.

For the South Pacific islands the major markets are Australia and New Zealand, which account for over 50% of total arrivals, followed by North America and Europe (30%), Japan and Asia (9%); other countries, including  the Pacific, account for only 11% (SPTO, 2013a:7). This shows a low level of inter-regional travel.

Boniface and Cooper point out (2013:528) there is little demand for outbound tourism in the South Pacific– it being mainly friends and relatives visits. In fact, there are few published statistics concerning outbound tourism of otherstates, caused by the fact that its tourism industry is at various stages of development (SPTO, 2013a).

On the other hand, Australia and New Zealand’s outbound market is strong, with 7.2mln and 2.1mln outbound visitors respectively (TRA, 2013; Statistics New Zealand, 2011). Australia’s most popular outbound destination is New Zealand, and vice versa. Their main inbound markets are North America, the UK/Ireland and Asia (Cooper and Hall, 2005).

Domestic tourism exhibits similar differences: as discussed <here>.