‘We moved our targeting focus from demographic to psychographic’

Come December and January, and the global sporting action – cricket, tennis tournament, Australian Open, Australian Grand Prix - moves Down Under. For most Indians, the focus is cricket and the ongoing Border–Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) – an International Test cricket trophy played between India and Australia – named after the legendary former captains Allan Border and Sunil Gavaskar. Another key trend is traveling to attend music concert be it Coldplay, Taylor Swift, AP Dhillion or even the home-grown talents such as Diljit Dosanjh or Arijit Singh.

Nishant Kashikar, Country Manager - India and Gulf, Tourism Australia says, “A key travel trend is the phenomenon called ‘event globetrotting’ where Indians are traveling for cultural, social and entertainment gatherings irrespective of where these events are held. We’ve tried to capitalize on these opportunities by showcasing Australia as a long-haul holiday destination. Through our various media initiatives, PR activations, we are trying to build awareness of Australia and these events help us drive visitation for the event and beyond events too.”

Looking at numbers, as per Cricket Australia almost 10,000 Indians globally have booked to travel for the ongoing Border–Gavaskar Trophy. The number of tickets sold out of India has seen almost a 5X increase as compared to the 2018-2019 series. Kashikar says, “There’s been a significant surge in Indian visitors traveling to Australia for the BGT series. Overall, India has been one of the fastest growing markets for Tourism Australia. We are already at almost 108% of our pre-covid levels with a record 430,000 visitors. While arrivals have gone up by 8%, spend has increased by 29% to reach 2.3 billion dollars, and an average Indian spends close to almost $6,000 on an Australian holiday, which is highest, if not highest, at par with what a global traveler spends in Australia. Most importantly, India has also significantly improved its ranking from being the 7th largest destination in 2019 to become the 5th largest destination in 2024. All the initiatives and marketing programs undertaken by Tourism Australia, have contributed to this growth.”

Leveraging Australian Cricketers

Tourism Australia tied up with Australian Test cricket captain Pat Cummins for the ‘Come and Say G’day’ campaign. This campaign features Cummins alongside brand ambassador Ruby the Kangaroo between overs in ‘Howzat for a holiday?’ to show Indian travelers the destinations and experiences Australia has to offer. The campaign has run on TV across the series and the campaign includes 30, 15 and 6 second videos, Out of Home creative and digital advertisements. Tourism Australia also released a four-part content series featuring former Australian cricketer, David Warner, showcasing his favourite Australian holiday destinations.

Kashikar says, “Australian cricketers resonate well amongst Indian consumers. David Warner and Pat Cummins have a huge following in India, especially on Instagram. Therefore, we thought to reach out to them and convert them into our brand ambassadors to showcase the best of what Australia has to offer.” He continues, “We measure our success in the form of the brand health metrics and closely monitor and measure the concentration for travel to Australia, the awareness and desirability portion for Australia. We also measure Australia in terms of the key factor that Indian travelers consider before selecting a holiday destination and how we perform on those particular metrics. We look at the campaign metrics, what is the cost per view, click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC) and the number of leads generated as a result of the campaign and the engagement levels per se. The brand health metrics and campaign metrics help us to achieve the strategic KPIs, in the form of spend arrivals, disposal, cost per person, or spend per person.”

Direct To Australia

Tourism Australia and Air India have signed a three-year marketing agreement to drive the Indian visitor arrivals to Australia. Under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Tourism Australia and Air India will jointly undertake and implement marketing activities to showcase Australia. With Air India ordering close to 500 aircrafts, an effort is to ensure that a larger share of these aircrafts are routed to Australia. Kashikar says, “We're going to roll out campaigns with Air India to build awareness for flights to Australia, promote some tactical fares along with PR initiatives to build the load factors. This will translate into more flights into Australia.” Pre-covid there were 8 direct flights a week into Australia from India, today it is 27 flights a week contributed by Air India and Qantas. However, 75% of the traffic out of India to Australia flies, one stop via Singapore, Bangkok, Malaysia, Hong Kong or Colombo. Kashikar says Tourism Australia also collaborates with indirect carriers through various aviation partnerships.

Commenting on its TG, Kashikar says, “We moved our targeting from the demographic focus to psychographic focused. Today, you're able to do interest-based targeting based on the likes and preferences of consumers. We have this cohort called as high yielding travelers – who travel, tend to spend more, stay longer and contribute significantly to the Australian economy. 87% of these high yielding travelers are based in the top 8 cities in India, and a focus continues to remain from a marketing, PR and distribution front on these cities.” Currently, 83% of traffic out of India to Australia is dominated by the leisure and business segment, and the balance is around education, employment and other purpose of visits.

Tourism Australia has also collaborated with leading Indian production houses for films and TV serials to be shot in Australia and has seen “phenomenal success” from these associations. Given the shift from television to OTT platforms, Tourism Australia is looking at opportunities of integrating Australia as a part of a web series and will continue to work closely with production houses to ensure they continue to film in Australia for any form of content. Kashikar says, “Our strategy going forward would be to seamlessly integrate an Australian destination in a web series for OTT platforms. A year ago, Australia and India have signed an audiovisual co-production agreement with three levels of incentives offered for Indian production houses to film in Australia. The incentives includes the location offset, the producer offset and the post digital and visual effect offset credits.”

The other focus segment is targeting corporate incentive travel - for dealers and employees - as this segment spends significantly higher than that of a leisure traveler. Tourism Australia has a best partner program with Singapore Alliance, and organizes sessions for corporates and decision makers to travel to Australia. Tourism Australia’s signature incentive showcase, Australia Next is designed to increase awareness of Australia as an incentive destination with business-to-business sessions between Australian industry sellers and international incentive agents to showcase MICE (Meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) infrastructure.

Kashikar says, “We believe we'll continue to achieve greater success of targets in India. Research agency, Tourism Research Australia has forecast that at least 650,000 Indian visitors will come to Australia by 2028. That's almost 50% higher than what we are currently seeing. To achieve that number, we have a four-prong strategy. First, knowing the customer and inspiring the customer to think about Australia through various marketing, PR, various distribution and partnership initiatives. Second, on aviation, access and facilitating direct, one stop flights and making it easier for Indian consumers to lodge a visa application to Australia. Third, offering quality experiences by launching new products, experiences and destinations within Australia. Fourth, focus on the business events of the mice segment.