TOKYO: This year's Vivid festival attracted a record 2.33 million visitors, with national and international visitors to the Sydney light show up by 35 per cent.

Launching the dates for next year's Vivid to the Japanese tourism industry in Tokyo, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the world's largest light show would be 10 years old in 2018.

This year, 5000 Japanese tourists travelled to Sydney to attend Vivid, but Ms Berejiklian said the NSW government wanted to boost Japanese tourism around the event, and would host a large delegation of 50 travel agents at Vivid in 2018.

Toru Ikuta, chief executive of major Japanese tour company, JTB World Vacations, said 20 years ago, 800,000 Japanese visited Australia annually. But the number of Japanese tourists plummeted by half in the following decades as tourism promotions stopped, and airlines reduced flights.