The National Visitor survey from the Tourism Research Australia federal agency report found that the number of domestic visitors to the Riverina dropped by 36 per cent to 797,000 people in the 12 months to March this year.

Visitors to the Riverina spent a total of $485 million in the 12 months before the first COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns occurred, but this figure dropped to $348 million in the 12 months afterwards.

The agency found that international visitors during the same time period were down 99.1 per cent across NSW.

Big4 Wagga Holiday Park owner Martin Cotterell said his accommodation business suffered a drop in visitor numbers similar to that seen across the Riverina in the first 12 months of the pandemic.

"April, May, June [last year] were locked down pretty much. We were no different to anyone else in town and if we didn't have a few workers staying here it would have been terrible," he said.

"I think this month of July, with the current lockdown, has been worse than last year. It is a shocker."

Tourism Research Australia's survey found that the Riverina fared slightly worse than the NSW average for the number of visitors, which saw a drop of 33 per cent.

The Riverina did much better in terms of visitor nights and overall visitor expenditure, which did not drop as much as the NSW average of 26.7 and 35 per cent, respectively.

In other news

Mr Cotterell said he hoped that NSW would go ahead with a plan to lift the Greater Sydney lockdown on Friday.

"We were bouncing right back after the end of the first lockdown and there were definitely more people travelling," he said.

"I would have thought we would have lost more visitors last year as we lost so many events to COVID."

Business NSW Murray-Riverina regional manager Anthony McFarlane said he had been expecting a drop in visitor numbers given the lockdowns and border closures in the months after March 2020.

"Those numbers would be consistent with the feedback we have received from our members," he said.

"We would have expected that up until the most recent lockdown, regional visitor numbers and visitor expenditure would have recovered quite well, although that could have been further boosted if Wagga was included in the federal government's half-price flight scheme."

Mr McFarlane said the tourism businesses and the wider economy would have seen the impact of lower visitors and lower levels of money being spent.

"It impacts staff, it impacts future spending within those businesses to build capacity, and then you have the secondary effects throughout the visitor economy supply chain for the businesses like the general stores or cleaners who rely on supplying tourism businesses or selling to their guests."

The one bright spot in the survey of national visitors was that the average visitor spend per person in the Riverina had increased by 13.5 per cent to $437.

"With international borders closed, there is more money to be spent domestically, which counterbalances some of the negative impacts from the loss of visitation," Mr McFarlane said.

Mr Cotterell said he had seen people decide to spend more time and money while visiting Wagga over the past year.

"I'm not sure all that money flowed through to other industries such as retail," he said.

"I think the average stay increased as people decided they might spend another day or two after getting here."

Destination Riverina Murray, the NSW government network tasked with growing tourism in the region, was contacted for comment but was unable to respond.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: