Melbourne has been named the city Australians would most like to visit in the country for a holiday, showing the ongoing popularity of so-called staycations.
The latest edition of the Roy Morgan Holiday Tracking Survey found that 14.8 million Australians are planning a staycation at some point during the next two years, with more than 4.25 million Aussies naming Melbourne as the place they'd most like to visit without having to go overseas.
Sydney came in second place, with 2.3 million Australians saying that this was the place they'd be most interested in visiting, while Hobart was next on the list as 1.7 million Aussies said this was top of their staycation bucket list.
While the popularity of both Melbourne and Sydney as staycation destinations had declined a little from the 2015 edition of the Roy Morgan Holiday Tracking Survey, Hobart's popularity has in fact grown by 8.7 per cent.
Michele Levine, chief executive officer of Roy Morgan, commented: "The increasing allure of Hobart is demonstrated by the fact Hobart was the only capital city to experience growth in all three key generations in the past two years - Generation Y, Generation X and the baby boomers and overtaking Brisbane is remarkable when one considers the respective populations of the two cities - Hobart (225,000) is less than a tenth the size of Brisbane (2.36 million."
Brisbane was named as the fourth most popular staycation destination for Aussies, with 1.7 million survey respondents saying they'd like to visit the city, which marks an increase of 0.4 per cent over the last two years.
In fifth place was Canberra, which has seen its popularity increase by 4.1 per cent since 2015, with almost 1.5 million Australian residents wanting to visit the city in the near future.
Perth came next on the list in sixth place, with 1.4 million respondents naming it as their top staycation destination, followed by Adelaide (1.3 million) and lastly Darwin (1.1 million).
