Four years of Routes Asia destination marketing success for Tourism Australia

Tourism Australia’s strong marketing performance was again recognised at this year's Routes Asia with the national tourism marketing organisation taking home the Destination Marketing Award for the fourth year in a row, during last night's Networking Evening event which took place at The Blue Leaf Filipinas in Manila, Philippines.

The award recognises Tourism Australia’s broad marketing activities and joint cooperative campaigns with more than 200 industry partnerships including airlines, state and territory tourism organisations and Australian airport partners.

The award comes after exciting news last week, that Brisbane will host the prominent Routes Asia conference in 2018. The conference will see more than 1,000 airline, airport and tourism delegates from 100 countries gather in the Queensland capital for Asia’s leading aviation route development forum.

Tourism Australia General Manager, Asia & Strategic Partnerships Tim Jones said this is a wonderful accolade for Tourism Australia and demonstrates our consistent performance having now won the award four years running.

Speaking to Routesonline after collecting the award he said: "It’s a privilege to accept this esteemed award on behalf of ‘team Australia’ – Australia’s airports, state and territory tourism partners and Tourism Australia – in recognition of our combined efforts in aviation development.”

"Tourism Australia plays a targeted and strategic role in the aviation arena, using partnerships to help grow sustainable and competitive aviation capacity to Australia,” he added.

Australia has seen strong growth in aviation capacity in the last decade with expansion by many major carriers now serving Australia directly from Asia and the Middle East as well as a number of new entrants including All Nippon Airways, Xiamen Airlines and most recently Qatar Airways.

In 2015-16, Tourism Australia will work with 22 airlines on marketing campaigns across its key international markets generating $30m in additional marketing funding.

Mr Jones said that to complement these traditional partnerships, Tourism Australia is also building partnerships with other travel and non-travel sector partners including STA Travel, Alibaba, Expedia, Virtuoso and VISA Inc.

Tourism Australia and its partners will invest close to $200m in marketing Australia to the world in 2015-16, a significant investment that will drive visitation and yield.

To reach the Tourism 2020 targets, Australia’s international aviation capacity needs to grow by 40–50 per cent. As at June 2015, Tourism Australia is tracking ahead of the international capacity targets, with 67 per cent of the additional seats required to achieve the Tourism 2020 targets already achieved.