The Americans appeared to prefer Sydney to any of the Asian cities rostered for leave, and after the first year of operation, flights, each of 165 servicemen, were increased to the rate of three every two days. At any one time there were over 1500 R&R men in Sydney and most of them were in Kings Cross. Up to June 1971 over 225,000 of them had visited Australia and it was estimated they had spent more than 70 million dollars, accounting for about one in every four tourist dollars in the country. Most of this enormous sum would have been spent in Kings Cross.