King Charles’ 2024 Royal Tour of Australia Amounted to Less Than Half the Cost of Queen Elizabeth’s 2006 Tour Down Under

King Charles and Queen Camilla’s October visit to Australia cost significantly less than Queen Elizabeth’s visit there 18 years prior.

When Queen Elizabeth visited in 2006 — a five-day trip that included stops in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and the Commonwealth Games — it cost $899,701 (£716,774), according to The Telegraph. In 2011, during what would prove to be her final visit to Australia, the Queen visited Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth over 11 days; the trip cost over $1.6 million (£1,328,461).

Comparatively, the King and Queen’s trip two months ago cost $372,797 (£297,000) — which The Telegraph reported is less than half the cost of the late Queen’s short visit 18 years prior.

The total cost of Charles and Camilla’s six-day tour — which breaks down to just over $62,000 per day — includes travel, accommodation, meals, events, hospitality, transport and making flags, according to The Telegraph.

The royal tour, which preceded a second stop in Samoa, was the King’s first visit Down Under as monarch. The trip was adjusted to include a rest day as he continues his cancer treatment, which will reach into 2025 but is headed in a positive direction, according to a Dec. 20 report from the palace.

Charles and Camilla’s Australia tour seemed to be well-received by the public there, save for being heckled by a senator during a Canberra reception at Parliament House. The couple undertook up to 10 engagements daily and were welcomed by an estimated 10,000 supporters at the Sydney Opera House.

Though they flew part of the way (from the U.K. to Singapore and back) via commercial airline, the figures of the tour — published in the Sydney Morning Herald — “are likely to spark criticism from the republican movement as Australia grapples with a cost-of-living crisis,” The Telegraph reported.

Australia’s Resolve Political Monitor found that 31% of people thought the King, 76, was doing “the job well,” down from 45% immediately after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in 2022. Support to make Australia a republic rose from 36% to 41% of those surveyed, and the King said ahead of his tour of Australia this year that Australia keeping him as head of state is “a matter for the Australian public to decide.”

Related: King Charles Believes Australia Keeping Him Head of State Is ‘a Matter for the Australian Public to Decide’

Related: Jamaica Makes First Move Towards Removing King Charles as Head of State

Australia remains one of 14 countries globally to retain the British monarch as its head of state. In 2021, Barbados became the most recent nation to become a republic, and Jamaica — which currently considers Charles its head of state — recently made a move towards removing the King in that capacity.

In the U.K., a recent IPSOS survey found that 43% of the British public think the royal family is a “good value for money for the U.K. taxpayer.” When it comes to dollars and cents, “Travel costs are among the largest bills of the royal finances each year,” The Telegraph reported. For example, Charles and Camilla’s three-day state visit to France last year cost nearly $148,000, and a state visit to Kenya cost $209,000.

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For the Australia royal tour specifically, the bulk of the money was spent foremost on travel, accommodation and meals, followed by expenses for event management and hospitality; ground transport; and expenses including a national contribution to the conservation project Greening Australia.

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