Newsroom24x7 Desk

Sydney, Australia : Australian data sheet on Tourism showed interesting figures with respect to International visitor footfall into the beautiful locales of Australia. According to a latest International Visitor Survey released by Ministry for Trade and Investment in Australia, international visitor spend (footfalls into Australian soil) grew by 10 per cent to a record $33.4 billion, or $3.2 billion more than the previous year.

Adjudged as the strongest yearly growth on tourism – comparing since 2001 – that time when Australia hosted Sydney Olympic Games and data available till date – Australia’s tourism industry has shown enormous potentials with respect to revenue generation and staying firmly in the favorite list of tourist destinations worldwide, especially on account of asian visitors.

Expressing deep pleasure on this data, Australian Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Bobb said, ‘Today’s result once again demonstrates that tourism is one of our great strengths. Tourism can be our fastest growing sector this decade if we continue to leverage our ‘clean, green and safe’ brand to position ourselves as the number one, long-haul destination in Asia.’

China and India did their bit to swell this survey statistics. China remained the dominant source of growth with a 22 per cent increase in visitor numbers and a 32 per cent increase in expenditure. With China accounting for one in every five dollars spent by international visitors, China earned the tag of being a vital country contributing to sustained growth of Australian tourism sector. And China has been awarded for this deed – Australian Government has announced a 10 year multiple-entry visitor visa for China (available online and in Mandarin language) which is in line with an earlier-done landmark aviation deal that would triple air capacity to 67,000 seats per week, between Australia and China by the end of 2016.

India too had its share of recognition in contributing to Australian tourism sector. With Australia having co-hosted the ICC Cricket World Cup earlier this year in partnership with New Zealand, India registered itself in Australian financial books as becoming one of the fastest growing markets with expenditure reaching a record $1 billion for the first time (up 39 per cent), while visitors increased 20 per cent.

Australia has ranked India as its 8th largest tourism market, up from 11th the previous year. This was strengthened earlier by Australia’s friendly tourist initiative, when for the first time, international visitors attending Cricket World Cup were eligible to enter both Australia and New Zealand under a joint visitor visa arrangement.

Australian tourism industry is well positioned to prosper as one of its great economic strengths and Australia is looking straight into contributing countries like India and China even more enthusiastically here on.