CANBERRA, June 6 (Xinhua) -- Australia's New South Wales is profiting from a Chinese tourism boom, according to a survey compiled by the NSW government.

    Chinese tourists are now bigger spenders than holidaymakers from the UK, the United States and New Zealand, the International Visitors Survey revealed on Friday.

    More than 260,000 tourists from China visited NSW in the year ending March 2008, spending a record 788 million dollars (756 million U.S. dollars), Tourism Minister Matt Brown said.

    "Every day more than 700 Chinese visitors arrive in Sydney, that's equivalent to two Boeing 747s, and each planeload of Chinese visitors delivers just over a million dollars to the NSW economy," Brown said.

    "China was also number one for visitor nights in NSW, at nearly8.89 million, and is the fourth largest source market for visitors to this state after the UK, New Zealand and the U.S.," he said.

    Overall, international visitors spent 5.5 billion dollars (5.28billion U.S. dollars), 407 million dollars (390 million U.S. dollars) more than the previous year.

    But visitor numbers dropped by 0.3 percent to 2.8 million, with a strong Australian dollar and the global credit crunch largely responsible.

    Higher oil prices and the Beijing Olympics could also have an effect in the next 12 months, Brown said.

    "There will be more challenges ahead because of the impact of surging oil prices on the cost of travel," he said.