Australia expects 1 mn Indian visitors by 2025

Tourism agency expects 40,000 more visitors for ICC T20 World Cup

India currently is the most sought after tourism market for Australia.

The Australian government’s global tourist promotion arm, Tourism Australia, expects the number of Indian visitations to reach five lakh by 2020 and cross 10 lakh by 2025 from some 3.72 lakh during the year ended March 2019.

Nishant Kashikar, country manager, India and Gulf, Tourism Australia said India was the fastest growing inbound market for Tourism Australia with five consecutive years of double-digit growth.

“In the last five years, there has been a 16% CAGR growth in Indian tourist inflows while the spending by them has gone up by 18% during the period,” he said.

A large number of Indian population was already in Australia — a huge Indian diaspora of 7.5 lakh people in addition to 90,000 students and a large base of Indian tech workers, he said.

“Our 2020 arrival goal for Indians was three lakh, but we had achieved this goal three years ahead of the target date in December 2017. That’s the kind of interest we see among Indians for Australian destinations,” he explained. As the host nation of the ICC T20 World Cup for Women and Men in 2020, Australia is anticipating to sustain its growth trajectory in tourism.

The country has recently made its online visa processing simpler and more convenient with no personal visits or need for biometrics. Also, it believes that its currency stability gives it an added attraction among foreign tourists.

Mr. Kashikar further said, “We expect an additional, up to 40,000 Indian visitors to Australia in connection with these two sports events. We want to make the ICC T20 World Cup for Women a very big event as part of our focus on popularising women sports.

“We are working with ICC and travel partners to make these events a huge success.”

Commenting on the emerging travel trends in India, he said, “We see interesting trends emerging around tour and travel in India. For instance, the age of first time international travellers from India has been dropping from 55 to 25 and now, five years. A few generations ago, travelling overseas was a senior thing, it became a young thing and now a large number of small kids are part of the global travel from India.”

Maharashtra leads in the number of visitors to Australia ollowed by Delhi and Karnataka. Some 3.72 lakh Indians who travelled to Australia last year contributed ₹8,500 crore to the Australian economy. Interestingly, friends/family and leisure segment accounted for 52% of these travels while the rest came from business, education and employment.

Tourism Australia has decided to invest Australian Dollar five million to hold a a comprehensive campaign to promote these sports events in India. The exercise will also including training airlines, tour and travel bodies and some 2,400 select travel agents.

New Zealand, the U.S., U.K., Japan, Singapore and Malaysia are the key tourism markets of Australia. India currently is in the sixth position in terms of tourists spend and on an average each Indian tourist spend around Australian Dollar 5000per visit.

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