In an effort to grow tourism from India, Western Australia is aggressively looking to establish new connectivity from India to Perth. The Western Australian Minister of Tourism has made two visits to India in the recent months and has met six Indian carriers to introduce routes between major cities in India and Perth.
Speaking about the development Paul Papalia, Minister of Tourism, Western Australia said, “Last time I was here two months ago, I met with senior executives of six airlines to talk about establishing new routes. We committed to coming back with providing them with business cases for travelling to Perth. We are delivering those, we also met with State Minister for Civil Aviation last time and we are meeting him again this time. We are putting business cases to the six airlines so that they understand the dynamics. Around 145,000 people are flying between India and Western Australia each year in both directions is a significant number. What we have said is we will work with whoever flies first. We are establishing relation with the Minister of Civil Aviation in India. As a state Government we will give all support to the airline and will offer money to market the route for a period. We are not locked down to any one route or airline and are open for any major city.”
In the last decade, Australia has become a popular destination amongst the Indian travellers. Still Western Australia is yet to make a major mark in this market; the destination has now started focusing aggressively to attract the Indian outbound.
Papalia said, “Earlier, we had the benefit of the mining boom; we had never seen tourism as a segment and were a bit myopic. Previously there was not much effort into diversifying. We as a new government elected in March last year, came by saying we would diversify the economy and invest in tourism and are responding to what was our failure in the past.”
Western Australia is now promoting itself as a destination with authentic experiences and they recently launched a new campaign to promote road trips.
Speaking about the USP of the destination Papalia added, “Western Australia is the authentic Australia. We are the actual experience that people would desire when they travel. India is a maturing market and they know what they want. They want to get out and experience things and get close to nature. We also launched a campaign to promote road trip. Western Australia has vast open expanse and beautiful access to pristine nature and sparse population. In the past that was often seen as negative, we turned that around and say that this is an opportunity for having road trips that will really be a bucket list experience.”
India is the number one market for Western Australia in terms of the students segment. The destination is looking to further grow this segment.
Papalia said, “Student market from India is the biggest we have, it’s slightly more than China. We have over nine per cent student market of the entire Australia. We think we can grow it to 25 per cent easily in the next couple of years. A big part of that is to get direct flights, which will make it easier to attract students. Then their families can visit and will boost our tourism, we are working collaboratively with all universities now to sell Western Australia as a study destination.”
Being a mining state, the destination also offers a lot of mine tourism products. Also with new infrastructure the state is eyeing to attract MICE travellers from India.
Speaking about the products Papalia said, “We are the most attractive MICE destination in the nation as we have the newest hotel product, we have a huge capacity and a lot of new hotels are coming up, forcing down the price overall. We have convention and conferencing centres and are very keen to partner to attract business travellers. In terms of Mining travel we have some magnificent mining options. We have the only operating Mint in Australia in Perth. One can do a tour of the Boddington Gold Mine which is one of the biggest gold mines in the world. We also have the Galvin’s port which is in the city. We have a lot of tourist mines which travellers can explore.”
