The NSW Government today announced its support for the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China signed on Tuesday (26 April) enabling more inbound incentive travellers in a rapidly growing market.
The NSW Government today announced its support for the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with China signed on Tuesday (26 April) enabling more inbound incentive travellers in a rapidly growing market.
In the past, inbound tourism from China could only be promoted to group travellers, but now travel to Australia can be promoted to “emerging travel segments.”
The NSW government has announced a memorandum enabling more inbound Chinese incentive travellers.
NSW Minister for Tourism and Major Events, George Souris, explained that this MOU broadens the current Approved Destination Scheme and now allows increased travel by Chinese individual Chinese travellers, as well as education and company paid incentive travel, all of which are vital for the State.
Minister Souris said the new agreement would allow the NSW Government and the State’s tourism industry to extend their promotional activity in the China market.
“China is a crucial, fast developing market for NSW. In the past 12 months to December, NSW received 359,000 overnight visitors from Greater China (China and Hong Kong), who spent 12.2 million nights and injected more than $1.2 billion into our economy,” he said. “This represents our second largest market for overnight international visitors to NSW – more than 12 per cent of the market. And the number of Chinese visitors to Australia is expected to continue to grow to around 1.1 million by 2019.
“NSW remains Australia’s favourite destination for Chinese visitors, attracting more than two thirds of all visitors (62.8 per cent) and more than a four in ten (43 per cent) of total visitor nights.”
Souris said that the growth of Chinese visitors had been complemented with an increase in air carriers servicing the China-Sydney route.
“The NSW Government is committed to supporting efforts to strengthen and grow the opportunities represented by the Chinese visitor market, an example being the recent campaign undertaken with China Southern Airlines and Tourism Australia to promote Sydney and NSW.”
