Tourism Australia welcomes Air India’s direct flights to Sydney and Melbourne
ETW STAFF – Mumbai
Tourism Australia’s managing director, Andrew McEvoy has welcomed the decision by Air India to launch direct non stop flights to Sydney and Melbourne – marking a return to the Australian market after 16 years. “Key to unlocking India’s long term tourism potential is improved air access and capacity. Securing direct flights to Australia is critical to securing a share of the 50 million Indians expected to travel overseas by 2020,” he said.
“Preliminary analysis suggests we’ll need around 345,000 additional seats to meet the expected demand for Australia from India out to 2020. On top of the capacity that already exists, these new, direct services soon to be launched by Air India represent a huge boost in realising the full potential of this important market. As with most of our recent aviation success stories, this positive outcome owes much to a team Australia approach. Sydney and Melbourne Airports, Destination New South Wales and Tourism Victoria all deserve great credit for getting this deal done and we look forward to combining our marketing resources to ensure the new services are now aggressively promoted within India,” said McEvoy.
McEvoy said that, under its India 2020 tourism plan, Tourism Australia had already doubled its marketing spend in India this year, and had made creating a sustainable, competitive aviation market between Australia and India one of its key priorities. Close to 160,000 Indians visited Australia in 2012.
