Tourism Australia Ramps up Efforts in India: Promotes Cricket and Air India Tie-Up

Skift Take

As Indians increase their travel spending, Australia is betting on love for cricket and sports to attract travelers.

Bulbul Dhawan

Tourism Australia is betting big on Indian tourists and is ramping up its efforts to attract them. The tourism board of Australia recently visited India along with a delegation of 15 CEOs from the Australian tourism industry.

Appealing to Indians’ love for cricket, Tourism Australia launched a social media video campaign starring cricketer David Warner. In the four-part series, Warner showcases his favorite Australian holiday destinations: Sydney, Melbourne, and the Gold Coast.

The campaign was launched a few days ahead of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, a test series between India and Australia that could attract sports tourists from India. 

Phillipa Harrison, Managing Director of Tourism Australia, said the series has attracted five times more bookings from Indians than it did in 2018.

This is not the first time a cricketer has been onboarded to promote Australia among Indians. Earlier this year, Tourism Western Australia used Australian cricketer Adam Gilchrist and his son Harry for a campaign geared towards Indian sports tourists planning to travel to Perth for the Border-Gavaskar series.

Partnership With Air India

Tourism Australia also announced a three-year partnership with Air India.

The airline operates 17 weekly non-stop flights between the two countries. In the year to August 2024, Air India held an 18.5% market share in the passenger movement between India and Australia. Air India CEO Campbell Wilson also said that the airline is planning to boost its presence in Australia. 

“India is an incredibly important market for us. We have a lot of ambition for this market. We have never been closer from a political point of view,” said Harrison. 

She added that aviation is a very important part of growing tourism between the two countries. “We have more aviation connectivity than ever before. We had 8 direct flights in 2019, and now, we have 25. It will soon increase to 27. That’s a 333% growth.”

A Key Market

Tourism Australia said that India was among the fastest growing inbound markets for Australia and amongst the first markets to recover to pre-Covid levels. Between January and August this year, more than 285,000 Indians visited the country: a growth of 11% compared to 2023 and 2019. 

In the year between September 2023 and August 2024, India was the fifth-largest inbound tourism market, the tourism board noted. Pre-pandemic, India was the seventh-largest source. 

India has also become the fifth-largest source in terms of expenditure in the year ended June 2024. Between July 2023 and June 2024, Indians spent 2.3 billion Australian dollars ($1.5 billion) during their visits to Australia: up 29% over 2019. 

Indians have been increasing their travel spends as they reached a new peak of spending $17 billion on global trips in the 2024 fiscal year. 

There is also a growing interest among Indians to work and vacation in Australia. India recently joined Australia’s Work and Holiday visa program, under which Indians have the opportunity to visit Australia for one year, and undertake work and short-term study while holidaying. 

“We have a predefined quota of 1,000 visas for Indians under the program. The number of applications have exceeded 40,000, so the response has been phenomenal and it will definitely do well for Indians,” said Nishant Kashikar, Country Manager – India & Gulf at Tourism Australia.

To further grow its visitor numbers, Australia is planning to focus on high-yield travelers including long-haul travelers and high value visitors in terms of trip expenditure and length of stay. Within India, the country’s focus is on Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Pune.