Tourism Australia had placed increased focus on building high yield markets including investing in joint campaigns and sponsoring a number of key events at Virtuoso’s annual Travel Week, held in August last year in Las Vegas.
SYDNEY – American high end travellers are strongly contributing to the extraordinary 22% growth in US visitation to Australia with international luxury travel network, Virtuoso, revealing a 20% growth in bookings out of the US for the second half of 2015.
Virtuoso Asia Pacific Managing Director, Michael Londregan said the figures, revealed ahead of the inaugural Virtuoso APAC Luxury Awards held in Sydney on 5 April, prove Australia is a strong international destination in the luxury field.
“Australia is hot on the travel agenda for American and Canadian high end travellers with Virtuoso recording a significant 20% increase in bookings in the second half of 2015,” Mr Londregan said.
“Australia has been on a steady climb for luxury travellers over the past few years and is one of the most popular destinations for American and Canadian high end visitors,”.
Mr Londregan said states such as Queensland (up 48%), Victoria (up 26%) and WA (up 11%) were recording significantly increased bookings on 2014 and figures for the current year were showing another year of growth.
Tourism Australia Managing Director John O’Sullivan said the organisation had placed increased focus on building high yield markets including investing in joint campaigns and sponsoring a number of key events at Virtuoso’s annual Travel Week, held in August last year in Las Vegas.
“The growing relationship with Virtuoso forms part of a concerted drive by Tourism Australia to increase knowledge amongst global sellers of travel to sell more Australian premium experiences,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
“The partnership started in July 2015 with a joint campaign also involving Destination New South Wales, Tourism Tasmania, South Australia Tourism Commission and Tourism Northern Territory and which includes a bespoke training program for Virtuoso’s network of 8,000 luxury travel advisors in the US and Canada.“
Tourism Australia has committed additional resources towards building the luxury sector in the US, recently appointing a new, dedicated premium manager within its North America’s team and its North America 2016 Australia Tourism Summit, held in Los Angeles in February 2016, included a strong focus on the premium market.
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