Australia’s Tourism Opportunity

Transcript

Robin Mack:Good morning, everybody. Thank you for having me here today. I am a complete aviation geek, so I'm in a happy space being here with you all this morning. And also, I wanted to thank you all for the role you play in tourism to Australia. We could not be successful, we could not talk about opportunities for Australia without each and every one of you, from our airports to our airlines. So, So thank you so much. In terms of where we're at as a destination, before I look at the growth opportunity, I thought I'd give you the state of play. We're at 9.2 million arrivals, and this is the data to May and the 12 months previously, and that's almost 10% up on the previous 12 months. I'm pleased to say that holiday purpose of visit is a, a big part of what's driving that growth. And those that are looking back to 2019, that's about 98.5% of we were where we were in 2019. It's a different mix of markets and where we're seeing growth come back from that. So, but still we're back to that number. Overall, overall in terms of visitor expenditure, we're at $57 billion. I'll dig a bit deeper in a moment looking at leisure spend, but again, you can see that is 16% up on the previous 12 months, and that's to March. And then in terms of jobs and the importance of tourism to Australia, we're about 730,000 people employed in our industry around the country. It actually takes about, or brings in 3% of our GDP. So such an important sector. In terms of what we do and our role at Tourism Australia, we focus solely on international, bringing people from around the world to come to Australia and travel around Australia. A big part of what we do is our brand campaign, Come and Say G'day, but a big part of what we do on top of that is how we work with our airline partners around the world. taking that aspiration and turning that into conversion and visitation. It's a huge part of what we do, and I'm grateful for all our partners that are here in the room that help us do that. This actually links into our vision as an organisation, and this is a new vision that we've put out, which is part of our Tourism 2035 strategy, and that's to be the first destination every traveller dreams of, but one they ultimately choose. We will do the job in putting it out there, making sure Australia's front and centre, and then with our conversion partners, we take them— get them to take that next step. If I look at the global forces that are really shaping demand for Australia, this is what we look at and 5 of those that we focus on. There's many more, but I thought these 5 were relevant for the room today. So from left to right, breadth drives choice. We're lucky as Destination Australia that we're famous for many, many things, but we want to be famous for a lot more. Because customers choose destinations based on the breadth of experience they can imagine they have when they come here. And when you think about a consumer, they're not thinking of any more than about 3 destinations at any one time when they're trying— when they're thinking of their next holiday or business event. So we need to make sure Australia is up there. The future of flight, and that's a big thanks to all of you in this room. One of our ubiquitous challenges as a destination with our location is time, distance, and money. They're the things we talk about for a long, long time. The distance, thanks to the evolution and the acceleration of technology, is narrowing, and we love that. And that's— thank you to Qantas for Project Sunrise and what's happening there. But as Brenton says at the start, also there's that growth of those long-range, ultra, ultra-long, ultra-long-haul flights that we can get coming into Australia, bringing a lot more point-to-point with the range they can cover. So that's really closing that gap, so we love that evolution. The Asian century continues, and I'll talk more about our markets in a moment, but there's such opportunity from our close neighbours. Capitalising on major events. So this is something we see and live and do because we know it drives our high-yield visitors to choose a destination. It's no coincidence that the UK inbound to Australia had their biggest year ever for visitors coming in here. And that was driven largely by the Ashes cricket series and the British and Irish Lions rugby tour. So, so important. We have such a runway of events coming out to 2032 when we host the British— sorry, when we host the Queensland Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. But there's many other moments in between that we're going to leverage. I'll also call out here for events that there are major events beyond the sporting side. But there's also business events and those high-yield visitors that they can bring to Australia. Now the rise in travel for good, we know sustainability is important for destination choice and increasingly so. 79% say they're concerned about the impact of travelling through the survey we've done. So as a destination, we need to make sure we punch above our weight in this area for sustainability when people are on the ground. And I know that we do, and it's our job to tell that story. But we also know we and all of our industry can and get better at what we do in this area. So we put out a rally cry to our industry which is called Green is Our Gold. And that's getting our industry who focus on sustainability to focus on it even more. And we've had so many, over 1,000 businesses around the country take the pledge to do more, and that's something we're going to be sharing with our customers around the world just to make sure there's an extra reason to pick Australia. In terms of our strategy for Tourism 2035, where do we think it can get to? And I have to give kudos to Rob Dugan, our Executive General Manager for Strategy and Aviation, who's here at the front, for his work him and his team did on this strategy. And I saw LEK in the room as well, so I'll give them a shout out for working with us on it. They worked with us on this forecasting, and this showed us where we feel we can get to in terms of the audiences that we focus on at Tourism Australia. So that's our leisure visitors, our working holidaymakers, and our business events visitors. In 2025, we're at $33 billion. We believe, and there's some stretch target in here, we can reach between $61 and $69 billion by 2035. And we have our distinct horizons to take us there. In terms of our market mix, and I said I'd come back to it, This gives you on that first horizon, so out to 2028, where do we believe the incremental growth will come from in expenditure terms into Australia. So you can see the size of the circle represents the size of the economic value that we believe we can get. The spoiler alert from this is the 4 big markets we have today into Australia are the 4 big markets we have in '28. So the US, UK, Greater China as a whole, and also the New Zealand market. But that Asian century continues. If you look at the Asia region, the ASEAN region, that's where we believe is one of the biggest areas for that incremental growth that can come through. But for us at Tourism Australia, these are the markets that we focus on to make sure we're in lots of different markets trying to drive such sustainable growth for our industry. In terms of who we target, it's high-yielding travellers, and unashamedly so. For us, it's about getting the right customers here that will travel, they'll spend more, and they'll disperse more when they come here as well. We classify those as high-yielding leisure. There's the luxury traveller as well, our working holidaymakers, which will spend less per day, but on the longevity of their here, they're a great cohort for us, and our business events, which will stay shorter, but they'll spend a lot more when they're here. If you think about high-yielding destinations, we're actually number one. We're 59th in terms of international arrivals, 9th in terms of receipts, but then 1st in terms of spend per day. Now how we're going to get here is really a big part of what you're all about, and we thank you in advance for it, is to grow the aviation seats coming into Australia. We believe to reach those projections I shared that we need 4.4 million seats by 20— incremental seats internationally by 2030. What I'm pleased to say though, for those in the room that don't know, is the infrastructure around the country is supporting that. A huge thank you to our airports in the room for the infrastructure development that you're undertaking. You can see there are 24 projects worth $29 billion that's underway around the country. Western Sydney Airport was mentioned earlier, but I'll give a shout out to Brenton and Adelaide Airport because you're hosting us here for the growth and the plans that you have as well. But that's replicated across the country. And also we're seeing infrastructure growth across accommodation and experiences, which are so important. So I hope that gives you a whistle-stop tour of what we think is the opportunity for tourism growth into Australia. But we can't do that without any of you and your support and partnership. So my final slide is just simply to say thank you. Now this is a still from our campaign, Come and Say G'day. Which is rolling out in our markets around the world. It's the final scene of the ad, and our stars are looking up at the plane flying out and saying, I wonder what memories they're taking home, because they'll be memories to last a lifetime. And a side note, it was very hard to pick the livery for that aircraft to keep it as neutral as possible because you've all got it sewn up. But what I will say is thank you for your partnership. We really appreciate it. We can't be successful without you. The team are here throughout the conference. We'd love to engage with you and see how we can help advance your future potential for Australia as well. Thank you everyone. Enjoy your break. Thank you.

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