DRMumbai: Tourism Australia has achieved its target of receiving 3,00,000 Indian visitors in 2017, a target actually set for 2020. The Australian Government in its analysis about the Indian market stated the country received a total of 302,655 Indian visitors for the year ended December 2017, thereby marking a rise of 15.4 per cent compared to the same period last year. Tourism Australia is expecting about 3,68,000 Indian visitors for the financial year 2019-20 with a growth of 9.1 per cent.
About the potential of the Indian market for Australia, Brent Anderson, Regional General Manager, South & South East Asia, Tourism Australia, said, “India currently is the eighth largest inbound market for arrivals for December 2017, and we expect India to rank fifth by 2025.”
Nishant Kashikar, Country Manager, Tourism Australia India and Gulf, said, “We are delighted to have crossed the 300,000-mark for arrivals into Australia from India, and are grateful to all our partners and stakeholders for being with us on this journey. The Tourism 2020 Goal from India’s overnight visitor spending perspective is to reach up to AUD 1.9 billion as compared to the current AUD 1.45 billion.”
“There are direct and non-stop flights between Delhi and Sydney operated by Air India, while the other key cities are served by about 10 airlines, including the Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Thai Airways, Etihad and Emirates, among others.”
Cricket has been one of the major drivers for international visitors, and the ICC World Twenty20 that is scheduled to take place in Australia in 2020 will again see surging number of Indian visitors to the country too.
“But, essentially they are looking for potential long-haul travellers for which they are also promoting other products like the Australian food and wines, aquatic and coastal, nature and wildlife, adventure destinations, and education,” he said.
Australia witnessed about 70,000 student travellers being enrolled in the Australian Universities in 2017, which is a 32 per cent growth as compared to the previous year.
According to the data available with Tourism Australia, the Indian travellers spent 15.5 million nights in Australia, with an average length of stay for all the Indian visitors being 57 nights, while the length of Indian leisure visitors touching a mark of 45 nights.
With weekly training programmes for travel agents and over 5,000 registered agents on the Aussie Specialist Programme as of December 2017, the agency is positive to achieve the set goal for 2020 on time.
