Canberra's spending on tourism is outstripped by the NSW south coast, the Hunter Valley and the Sunshine Coast, but it spends more than Hobart and Darwin, a new interactive website shows.
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The capital was ranked 12th out of 76 Australian tourism regions in terms of spending, and was similarly positioned at 13th in terms of overnight visitors and 11th on number of rooms.
It's lowest ranked result was 56th, on a ratio of visitors to population, while room occupancy was 66.7 per cent, ranked 9th. Sydney was ranked 1st for room occupancy at 80.7 per cent, the interactive website produced by Tourism Research Australia and based on 2013-14 numbers shows.
The other big tourism spenders were unsurprisingly all capital cities - except Darwin and Hobart - plus the Gold Coast and tropical north Queensland, and were similarly ranked on number of visitors.
A spokesman for the tourism minister Andrew Barr said the figures showed Canberra's visitor numbers were growing in a period when other well-known tourist destinations had experienced a fall.
He pointed to overnight visitation for Canberra which grew by 7.8 per cent between 2006-14, compared to a fall of 6.1 per cent on the Sunshine Coast and a 5 per cent fall on the Gold Coast in the same period.
The ACT's opposition spokesman for tourism, Brendan Smyth, said Canberra was falling behind as compared to parts of rural and regional Australia.
"The issue here is that we have enormous potential in our tourism industry, and yet we languish behind places like the south coast," Mr Smyth said.
South coast visitor numbers increased by 12 per cent between 2006-14.
Mr Smyth said Canberra's place at 13th on total visitor numbers was due to the city's existing assets such as museums and galleries, but that the city wasn't using its assets to "capacity".
He did not say whether or not a Liberal government would increase tourism spending, but said his party's preference for improving the convention centre over building a tram line was an investment in tourism infrastructure.
Minister Barr's spokesman reaffirmed a $5.3 million investment for refurbishment of the convention centre among other programs, and a commitment to the 2020 Tourism Strategy, which aimed to grow overnight visitor expenditure to $2.5 billion by 2020.
