Quick Summary

Between 2021–2025, Australians overwhelmingly travelled to nearby Asian hubs like Indonesia, New Zealand, and Japan, while most of Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean languished in the bottom or zero-visitor categories. Connectivity, marketing, and geopolitical stability determined which destinations flourished and which disappeared from Aussie itineraries.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• The Winners
• The Losers
• The Ghosts
• Indices
• Regional Patterns
• Macro-Storylines
• Why This Matters for Forward Travel
• Conclusion
• Methodology

Introduction

Australians love to travel. We pride ourselves on being intrepid explorers, but when the numbers are crunched, it turns out our passports tell a much narrower story.

Between 2021 and 2025, the Department of Home Affairs tracked millions of overseas departures. Some of the results were predictable: Bali packed with Aussies, New Zealand and Singapore thriving as safe bets. But scratch beneath the surface, and another picture emerges: dozens of countries slipping, stagnating, or vanishing entirely from Australian itineraries.

That’s why we created the Australia’s Travel Hotlist 2021–2025: The Winners and Losers, a 10,000-word report analysing four years of official data. It’s a story not just about where we go, but where we don’t, and what those patterns say about connectivity, culture, and opportunity.

This blog is your deep-dive summary of the major storylines. If you want the rankings, indexes, and full breakdown, you’ll need the report. But first, let’s unpack the big questions:

• Which destinations won the Aussie traveller’s heart?
• Which countries fell into the bottom 20?
• And which never registered at all, the ghost destinations?

The Winners

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The Top 20 was dominated by countries you’d expect:

• Indonesia cemented itself as the perennial leader, with Bali’s proximity and affordability making it irresistible.
• New Zealand held steady, boosted by family ties and ease of travel.
• Singapore reigned as a major transit hub and destination.

But there were surprises too:

• Japan stormed the rankings, a post-COVID darling that ticked every box: culture, food, snow, safety.
• Vietnam jumped higher than many expected, positioning itself as the affordable alternative to Thailand.
• India re-entered the spotlight, fuelled by diaspora ties and a booming tourism push.

In other words: Aussies chased familiar favourites but also rewarded countries that invested in accessibility and marketing.

The Losers

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If the Top 20 is about comfort and convenience, the Bottom 20 tells a story of neglect. Across the four years, countries like Liberia, El Salvador, Moldova, and Samoa barely scraped into double digits of Aussie visitors.

Our analysis identified several patterns:

• Anchors of obscurity: Countries such as Guinea, Mauritania, and Burundi remained glued to the bottom. No visibility, no marketing, and no connectivity kept them there.
• Climbers and faders: A handful of countries (like Georgia and Montenegro) oscillated, sometimes pushing upward before falling back.
• One-hit wonders: Temporary border reopening’s meant some destinations appeared in the data one year, then disappeared again.

For tourism boards, this is where the insights sting: being in the bottom 20 isn’t just about obscurity, it’s about missed opportunity.

The Ghosts

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Then there are the ghosts: dozens of countries that either recorded zero travellers or fewer than five across four years. This is where the absence is most telling.

• Connectivity voids: Pacific microstates like Niue, Tuvalu, and Wallis & Futuna barely register because of limited flight options.
• Geopolitical blockages: Countries like Libya, Syria, and North Korea remain unreachable, either unsafe or outright banned.
• Cultural disconnects: The Caribbean (Barbados, Bahamas, Antigua) is accessible via the US but has no pull factor for Australians.
• Tourism silence: Nations like Belarus or Guinea-Bissau do little to market themselves to the Australian market.

Our Presence Index measured which of these “zeros” ever flickered into the data and which stayed absent every year. What were our findings? Entire continents remain invisible to Aussie travellers.

Indices

To make the analysis meaningful, we used two indices:

• Volatility Index (for the Top/Bottom 20): tracked how much a country’s rank bounced year to year. Destinations like Vietnam showed upward volatility (a breakout story), while others like Fiji held steady.
• Presence Index (for Ghost Destinations): measured how often a destination moved between 0, <5, and marginally measurable numbers. It showed which were anchors of invisibility and which had latent potential.

These measures helped us see not just who was “in” or “out,” but the shape of the movement.

Regional Patterns

Zooming out, clear regional trends emerged:

• Asia-Pacific dominance: Southeast Asia and East Asia claimed most of the Top 20 spots. Connectivity and cultural familiarity were key drivers.
• Europe’s middling role: Western Europe underperformed expectations. Despite its pull, cost-of-living pressures and distance reduced Aussie interest.
• Africa’s invisibility: With few exceptions (South Africa, Kenya, Egypt), most African nations sat at the bottom or ghost categories.
• The Americas split: North America (USA, Canada) thrived; Central America and the Caribbean barely featured.

This wasn’t just preference. It was about airlines, visas, marketing spend, and geopolitical stability.

Macro-Storylines

The numbers only make sense in context. Several macro-trends shaped the data:

1. Connectivity voids: No flights = no visitors. Entire regions are excluded from Australian travel patterns because airlines don’t service them.
2. Post-COVID divide: Some destinations bounced back fast (Japan, Vietnam); others never recovered (Pacific islands that lost carrier links).
3. Geopolitical barriers: Wars, sanctions, and collapses erased countries from the map (Ukraine, Syria, Libya).
4. Marketing silence: Tourism boards matter. Nations that invested in visibility (Vietnam, India) surged. Those that didn’t vanished.
5. Cultural pathways: Aussies travel where they feel cultural familiarity: diaspora links, historical ties, or media exposure.

Why This Matters for Forward Travel

At Forward Travel, we’ve always specialised in the places that don’t make the mainstream map. From Namibia to Nicaragua, our portfolio aligns almost perfectly with the Bottom 20 and Ghost categories.

This isn’t a coincidence. The very destinations Aussies overlook are the ones most rewarding when you get there: fewer crowds, deeper culture, wilder landscapes.

This report isn’t just a diagnosis of absence but a roadmap to opportunity.

Conclusion

Travel data tells us more than who’s on holiday where. It reveals our comfort zones, our blind spots, and our future opportunities.

Between 2021 and 2025, Australians proved loyal to their favourites but also open to new entrants like Japan and Vietnam. At the same time, dozens of countries slipped into obscurity, either structurally or through neglect.

For airlines and tourism boards, the challenge is to connect. For travellers, the opportunity is to look beyond the usual suspects. And for Forward Travel, this is the validation of our mission: to champion the corners of the world that Australians haven’t yet discovered.

Download the full 10,000-word report: Australia’s Travel Hotlist 2021–2025: The Winners and Losers.

Methodology

All data was sourced from the Department of Home Affairs’ official Overseas Arrivals and Departures statistics (source).

• We extracted departure numbers for every country from 2021 to 2025.
• Rankings were created year by year and aggregated into Top 20, Bottom 20, and Zero/Low-visitor categories.
• We used two analytical tools:
  • Volatility Index: measured how much a country’s rank moved year to year.
  • Presence Index: tracked whether a destination ever moved between 0, <5, or measurable visitors.
• Insights were then grouped into regional and macro-storylines to create a complete picture of Australia’s outbound travel map.