VisitBritain’s five-day Australian trade mission kicked off in Sydney this morning, which will see dozens of British travel trade and industry suppliers meet with top buyers from Australia to do business.
One-to-one business meetings are set to take place during the mission, giving top Australian travel buyers the chance to connect with British suppliers and destinations, learn about the latest products and innovations on offer and explore new business opportunities.
“I am delighted to be leading VisitBritain’s first trade mission to Australia in nearly a decade, a timely and valuable opportunity to harness the strong growth we’re seeing from this incredibly important inbound visitor market, forecast to be worth a record £1.7 billion to our economy this year,” said Nick de Bois CBE, Chairman of VisitBritain.
“This mission marks a major milestone for us to reconnect with the travel trade across Australia. Building product knowledge also broadens itineraries so visitors explore more of our nations and regions, with that spending going into local economies.”
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de Bois continued: “The friendship and connections between our countries already run deep. The size of our delegation shows the enthusiasm from British tourism suppliers to do business with Australia and to hear first-hand from buyers on the motivations and trends driving outbound travel.”
The British suppliers include hotels, visitor attractions, destination management companies, retailers, tour and sightseeing operators spanning the length-and-breadth of the nations and regions. During the trade mission, which will continue onto Melbourne and Brisbane later in the week, delegates will also have the chance to connect with top travel advisors from Australia’s retail sector during networking events and dedicated agent training sessions, converting the demand for Britain into bookings.
de Bois told LATTE Australia is one of five major markets VisitBritain is targeting for inbound growth, alongside the USA, Gulf States, France and Germany.
He said “no market comes close to going into the regions” of Great Britain as the Australian traveller does.
The Australian travellers length of stay is now 14 days, and the average Aussie spends £1,376 on their holiday to Great Britain (that compares to the global average spend being around £820).
A key strategy for the tourist board will be to swing consumer thinking about Great Britain as a future holiday destination to a “go now” location.
“We’re interested in making people not leave Britain on the bucket list and to do later. We’re focused on how to bring that new dimension to make people think they want to go now,” he told LATTE.
‘Starring Great Britain’
VisitBritain will also be updating delegates on its upcoming multi-million pound ‘Starring GREAT Britain’ campaign, rolling out across its major inbound markets from early 2025 including in Australia. The campaign is harnessing the powerful draw of screen tourism to inspire more visitors to choose Britain, discover more and stay longer, driving visitor spending into local destinations.
Through a Memorandum of Understanding with the British Film Commission, VisitBritain is working with major film and TV studios to unlock opportunities and help tell a British screen tourism story across all our marketing and communications channels. The objective will be collecting product and experiential content from our destination partners across the whole of the
country that best represents our brand positioning, using film and TV as the inspiration and hook into wider destination content.
Latest research by VisitBritain showed 86% of Australians who are keen to visit the UK are interested in visiting film and TV locations during their trip.
VisitBritain’s latest estimates show Australians are forecast to spend a record £1.7 billion on their trips across the UK this year. The number of Australian visits to the UK has also been reaching historic highs. There were a record 1.2 million visits from Australia to the UK in 2023, up 10% on 2019.
de Bois said the Australian market has the potential to reach £2 billion in spend by 2026.
Lead image, from left are VisitBritain’s Paul Gauger, Executive VP, The Americas, Australia & New Zealand; Maria Sykes, Head of Australia & New Zealand and Nic de Bois, CBE Chair.
