Image via Shutterstock
Visitors to Australia in the 12-month period to August 2014 were up 8.2% compared to the previous year.
UK visitors to the country were also up by 5.7% to 666,900 in the same period.
The UK remains Australia’s most valuable leisure market in terms of total spend with leisure visitors from the UK contributing 15% of the total spend for all inbound leisure visitors, worth AU$2.6 billion.
Denise von Wald, Tourism Australia’s (TA) regional general manager UK/Northern Europe, said: “At Tourism Australia, we are working with industry partners around the world to deliver our Tourism 2020 Strategy which aims to achieve AU$115-$140 billion in overnight expenditure by the year 2020, up from $70 billion in 2009.
“As part of this plan we have a huge focus on attracting UK visitors, who spend a lot and travel widely in Australia.
TA’s global focus on better telling the story of Australia’s food and wine experiences under the campaign headline ‘Restaurant Australia’ (RA) is proving successful in the UK market.
A new TV series has also been developed with Channel 4 due to air in 2015, and TA has rolled out a series of Restaurant Australia themed travel agent training events to help frontline staff convert consumer interest in to bookings for Australia.