India's overseas tourists market is "positive" for Australia with the number of visa applications from the country rising by over 30 per cent during the first three months this year as compared to last year, says a top tourism official.
According to John O'Sullivan, managing director of Tourism Australia (TA), the increase in the number of tourist visa applications was mainly seen post Cricket World Cup in 2015 which introduced Australia as a holiday destination to the Indian tourists who were otherwise traditional visitors.
"Cricket World Cup introduced Australia to Indian tourists. We have also seen some aggressive work in India by our Mumbai-based office as well as partners like Singapore Airlines, Jet Airways and Qantas in promoting Australia," he told PTI.
"We have seen an increase of 32 per cent in visa applications from India and that caused some short-term delays of over four weeks of getting visa approvals through which has now been fixed," O'Sullivan said while giving details about the tourism figures of the first three months this year.
O'Sullivan was speaking on the sidelines of Australia Tourism Exchange (ATE) 2017, an annually held event that brought over 700 travel wholesales and retailers from 30 nations with 1,500 Australian tourism sellers.
"India is a our key priority and we are working hard with Air India and Singapore Airlines to promote Australia in India. We have seen from recent times that Air India is more open to increase frequency to 10 times a week to Sydney and Melbourne and we would love to see Jet Airways flying from Mumbai to Sydney," he said.
"If you look at the origin of the Indian market it had been visitors from family and relatives category and bulk of them were in Sydney and Melbourne," he said adding that the trend was now changing and according to last year's statistics, Queensland, specially Gold Coast city, was topping the chart of popular destination among the Indian consumers.
O'Sullivan said the TA was now keen to work towards building the image of Australia as a destination to be visited multiple times rather than only once.
The Indian consumers were looking at Australia with a lot of attributes like quality food and wine.
According to the latest official data, 67,800 Indian tourists visited Australia during January-March this year as compared to 60,300 in the same period last year.
Total arrivals for calendar year 2016 stood at 260,000, an increase of 11.3 per cent as compared to last year in the similar period.
An average spend for Indian visitors was recorded at 5,068 Australian dollars with a total contribution of Indian tourists standing at 1.24 billion Australian dollars to the Australian economy.
The exhibitors in the Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE) 2017, Indian outbound market was identified as one of the top priority market to be tapped with China grabbing the topmost slot.
According to one of the exhibitors, Elyss larkham of Moonshadow-TQC cruises, India is an important market and the company is seeing growth in bookings from Indian consumers.
Angie Hua of South Australia Tourism Commission said the state was also witnessing a "positive" leap from India.
The commission launched several initiatives to boost awareness for a variety of experiences and activities like Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, Barossa and Adelaide Hills and over the next two years it is expected to focus on targeting segments like families, honeymooners and independent leisure travellers.
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