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Destination Australia
Despite
a number of travel constraints, more and more Indians are travelling to
Australia. Find out why
It is
hard to miss the barrage of marketing stunts unleashed to transport
planeloads of Indians to Australia. Not a day passes by without a half-page
or full-page advert making an appearance in newspapers, promoting Australia
as the go-to tourist destination. There is hardly a commercial break on
television without, well, a commercial showcasing the splendid sights of
the country. If you happen to be a fan of Masterchef Australia, the reality
TV contest about food, wine and chefs, you again cannot escape Australia.
And there is more on the way. The saasbahu TV fan
will soon see more of Australia because a few episodes of a couple of soaps
have been shot in the country. A romantic song of a Bollywood movie filmed
in Australia will soon be beamed as an ad.
These are the in-your-face campaigns launched by
Tourism Australia, the government agency responsible for attracting
international visitors. There is also a behind-the-scenes, so to speak,
marketing drive to propel Australia into the mainstream consciousness of
Indians. The agency recently organised in a trade event in Goa, where
delegates from the Australian tourism industry met India’s top 100 travel
agents to showcase Australia’s attractiveness as a quality tourist
destination. Meanwhile, carriers such as Singapore Airlines, SilkAir,
Malaysia Airlines and our own Air India are aggressively coaxing customers
to fly to Australia.
All these efforts are part of an integrated
marketing campaign across the media — advertising, PR programmes, trade
shows, consumer promotions, online communication and consumer research —
that Tourism Australia launched under the banner of a campaign called 2020
India Strategic Plan. The campaign has drawn up an exhaustive strategy to
increase the arrivals from India at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.2%
over the next eight years.
More importantly, spending by Indians — now this is
what really matters to the Aussies — is on pace to grow at 12% year on
year. Indeed, the Indian traveller’s contribution to the Australian
economy, when they check into hotels, go on sightseeing, participate in
adventure sports and fly internally, has the potential to grow to up to
A$2.3 billion from the current A$804 million by the end of this decade.
Huge Buildup
The confluence of all the
marketing acts is already bearing fruit. Nishant Kashikar, manager, India,
Tourism Australia, says leisure arrivals from India have increased by 16%
for the year ended June 2013 from a year ago since the launch of the 2020
campaign. He is even more pleased to see that spending by Indians
travelling on holiday has risen by nearly 60% in this period. “These
numbers are very encouraging given the [bleak] economic situation,” he
says.
That is partly because the number of India-born
Australian citizens has doubled over past five years, which helps build the
so-called visiting friends and relatives (VFR) segment. The “repeat travel”
to Australia from India is as high as 50%.
Madhavan Menon, managing director, Thomas Cook
(India) Ltd, says travel has clearly become an intrinsic part of the Indian
consumer calendar. “And with the latent potential of 50 million outbound
travellers by 2020, India is an opportunity that tourism boards like
Australia’s have been quick to seize,” he says.
Other factors too have made Kashikar’s job easy.
Over the past four years, the bilateral relations between the two countries
have improved significantly. Trade — nearly 100 Indian companies such as
GMR, Adani, Mahindra & Mahindra and Infosys are present in Australia —
has helped drive business traffic. Recently, 4,000 members of Amway India
travelled to Melbourne for the direct selling company’s annual leadership
summit.
Likewise, Australia’s attractiveness as a
destination for education (the attacks on Indian students are now a distant
memory) has also increased.
So much so that Tourism Australia hasn’t felt the
impact of the slowdown on arrivals from India. Leisure arrivals rose by 14%
while overall arrivals were up by 8% in July from a year ago, according to
the latest figures available.
For this, the Aussies have to thank the
depreciation of the Australian dollar against the US dollar, reversing the
trend of previous years. The currency has remained relatively stable
against the rupee as well. The Australian dollar translates into 54-58
rupees, hovering at this rate for six months.
Kashikar says this is not cheap, but adds that the
currency has remained relatively stable. “These are things working in
Australia’s favour at this point of time.”
Thomas Cook’s Menon says Australia has emerged as a
strong destination for his company this season. “Our product teams have
leveraged upswings in the rupee against the Australian dollar,” he says.
What Slowdown?
Australia has also found support from unexpected quarters. About three
weeks ago, Air India launched daily non-stop (12-hour) flights from New
Delhi to Sydney and Melbourne. Tourists apart, the direct connectivity
coupled with increased capacity — 256 seats a day which eventually translate
into 93,400 annually — is also an incentive for business travellers.
Mohit Sardana, director, outbound product
development, at online travel company Makemytrip, says the direct flight is
a gamechanger because previously airfares were expensive. Travellers had
little choice but book connecting flights to Australia from Singapore and
Hong Kong.
Vacationers typically pay 40,000-50,000 to catch a
flight to Europe compared with around 70,000 to Australia. Air India had
launched an introductory airfare of around 40,000 to Australia to coax
travellers though there is bound to be a spike in fares in the run-up to
the peak travel season.
For a traveller, it helps that getting an
Australian visa is easy. The Australian government has launched a programme
called Preferred Agency Scheme for easier facilitation of visas (within a
week) by shortlisted travel agents in India. The top 25 travel agents have
also been entrusted with an e-visa facility so that clients get visas
within a day.
Binge Traveller
Delightful results as these are, Australia is still not a patch on
Europe, Southeast Asia and the US in terms of the number of Indian
arrivals. Sardana says from the perspective of pure numbers, Australia is
still a small destination. The number of Indians whose travel to Australia
that Makemytrip facilitates is about 30% of the total number of Indians
flocking to Europe.
Globally, Australia is ranked 42 in terms of total
tourist arrivals. Even the number of Indian visitors pales in comparison to
the Chinese — 685,000 Chinese compared with around 1,60,000 Indian
tourists.
But turn to spending patterns, it becomes a totally
different ballgame. Australia is one of the fastest-growing destinations in
the world, ranked No. 8 in terms of total tourist receipts. This dichotomy
in arrivals and spending is visible in the case of India too. Arrivals from
India are expected to grow at 7-8%, but their expenditure will increase at
a faster clip of 12% in the next eight years.
Kashikar says these are remarkable statistics given
that time, costs and distance are travel barriers for Australia. “It is not
a shorthaul destination. One needs to plan much in advance and then ensure
everyone in the family has accumulated leaves together,” he says.
Due to the travel constraints, Australia can never
hope to accumulate huge volumes like Europe. The Aussies are not
complaining though. They are happy that their country
is a high-yield destination in that
the traveller contributes significantly to the economy.
The reason is simple. Australia is vast and diverse
— it has something to offer for the nightlife lover and the nature fan —
drawing an eclectic mix of travellers. Every city can lay claim to be a
destination on its own right. The country offers a mix of wildlife
sanctuaries and serpentine coastlines.
Sujata Modi, a freelance writer from
Mumbai, has this to say about her trip to Australia. “Locations like
Kangaroo Island simply blow you away. With its sheer virgin seascapes,
sparcely populated and unpolluted expanses of land, mammoth natural rock
formations and animal exoticism, it is a land untouched and untarnished. I
had gone for the kangaroos and koalas and instead of just watching them sit
on my bed’s headrest in their stuffed creations, I got to really feel,
touch, smell, hold, cuddle real ones. I was witness to a seal fight.
Wallabies ate out of our hands; we fed hoards of pelicans with fish in the
cold of the e ve n i n g a n d t h e n watched little penguins cross the
sands in the dark of the night.”
Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and CEO of Ixigo, an online and mobile travel
search engine, says the diversity of Australia is a huge draw for Indians.
As is the vastness. A tourist who travels such a distance would want to
visit at least 3-4 cities. Even then they would have left a large stretches
untouched. Farzana Suri, an advertising professional based in Mumbai, says
even two weeks are too short for visiting Australia. “You cannot do
justice. I’ll definitely go again a year later.”
Australia is also a shining example of Indians
turning lavish during travel. “Indians who haggle with their vegetable
vendors have no problem spending overseas,” says Bajpai. It should not
surprise that Indians outspend the Chinese.
Travel Bug
Kashikar says many Indians are travelling and staying for much longer
in Australia, prolonging their travel from a week to at least two weeks.
They are not only visiting traditional gateway cities such as Sydney and
Melbourne but also the surrounds and new destinations, he says. Examples:
Hayman Island, Lizard Island, Great Ocean Road, Wolgan Valley, Kangaroo
Island and the like.
A person who makes it to Australia is an evolved
traveller, according to Kashikar. “They would not just like to take a
photograph against iconic landmarks, but also take in the local culture. So
it is not just taking a photo outside the Sydney opera house but watching a
performance at the opera house. It is not just taking a walk on the Bondi
Beach, but participating in a surfing lesson there.”
A constant traveller like Suri says she visited
Australia for a difference experience. “With Europe, if you’ve seen one
place, you’ve seen every other. Not so with Australia. The place holds a
natural beauty that you cannot experience anywhere else,” she says.
That’s not to say there are no honeymooners and
family travellers making a beeline for Australia. Even honeymooners
participate in activities like scuba diving, snorkelling and surfing. Neha
Sharma, a media professional from Mumbai, did just that. She took to bungee
diving, hopped on to a sea plane, did some sky diving and surfed during her
visit last December. “I woke up at 5.30 every morning so as not to miss any
activity,” she says.
Kashikar says while travelling to Australia, one
switches on. For once, he wasn’t talking about spending.
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