The table illustrates how visitors went to Australia’s six World Heritage sites in 1996, 1998 and 2000.
Overall, while Great Barrier Reef, Blue Mountains, Tasmania Wilderness and Shark Bay witnessed an upward trend, the opposite was true for the other two sites. In addition, among four sites, Great Barrier Reef was the most atractive tourist destination.
In 1996, 1,670,000 travelers visiting Great Barrier Reef, which was highest and roughly doubled that of Cetral Eastern Rainforest Reserve, with 810,000. Four years later, the former increased dramatically to reach a peak of 3,200,000, while the latter went down by 20,000 every two years. Moreover, the figure for Blue Mountains recorded a moderate rise from 526,000 in 1996 to end at 581,000 visitors.
Looking at other destinations, initially, Tasmania Wilderness welcomed 450,000 tourists, compared to only 84,000 and 350 people visiting Shark Bay and Macquarie Island. In the following 4 years, the number of tourists to Shark Bay peaked at 102,000 before dropping to 89,000. There was a gradual rise by 33,000 in the data on Tasmania Wilderness, whereas the figure for Macquarie Island experienced a fall of 40 in 1996, prior to an increase to 330 in the last year.