Tourism Australia signs Jetstar deal to boost Asian arrivals
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Tourism Australia has signed a AU$10 million (US$10.4 million) marketing deal with Jetstar aimed at boosting Japanese inbound tourism and expanding Australia’s presence in Asia Pacific.
The three-year agreement will see Tourism Australia and Jetstar each contribute at least AU$1.6 million per year on a range of joint marketing, digital and social media activities, with the aim of increasing arrivals from Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and New Zealand.
The first tranche of AU$2 million will be directed to rejuvenating the Japanese market, which has slipped from Australia’s second to fifth largest source market for international tourists over the past 10 years.
Tourism Australia’s Managing Director, Andrew McEvoy said the deal was an extension of the national tourist board’s ongoing focus on Asia, but also represented a new approach to Japan and working with airline partners.
“It unlocks real value by leveraging the combined skills, expertise and resources which both our organisations have long demonstrated in Asia. We aim to use our well-established and successful ‘There’s nothing like Australia’ campaign messaging alongside Jetstar.com to drive bookings and inbound travel,” McEvoy said.
“Like Tourism Australia, Jetstar has ambitious expansion plans for wider Asia and sees sustained and large growth opportunities, led by the greater China market, and numerable Southeast and North Asian markets including Japan, which will clearly remain in the top half dozen of Australia’s tourism export markets. There’s strong alignment and a real natural fit,” he added.
Jetstar Group CEO, Bruce Buchanan commented; “This partnership will leverage Australia’s attractiveness as a destination for international tourists with Jetstar’s leading low fares as a means to convert this into actual arrivals. The potential flow-on benefits for Australian tourism will be significant.”
The agreement forms part of Tourism Australia’s goal of doubling overnight visitor expenditure to AU$140 billion by 2020.
Japan is currently Australia’s fifth largest source market for international tourists, spending approximately AU$1.5 billion in 2010. There were 350,200 visitor arrivals from Japan for the 12 months ending August 2011, a drop of 11%, but Tourism Australia said it believes this market has the potential to grow to between AU$2.7 billion and AU$3.3 billion in total expenditure by 2020.
Jetstar Japan will launch operations late next year.