Melbourne Cricket Ground (Image used for representational purpose)
India has jumped to the eighth position for tourist arrivals in Australia till May this year, with over 27.5 per cent more Indians choosing the country as their travel destination.
According to latest official data released by Tourism Australia (TA), India was ranked Australia's tenth largest inbound market for visitor arrivals in 2014 but figures during the five months this year has moved India to eighth position.
During January-May this year, a total of 105,000 Indian tourists have arrived in Australia as compared to over 82,000 tourists for the same period last year, recording an increase of more than 27.5 per cent.
Australia ranked third for the Indian traveller in terms of aspiration and intention to visit, just behind Mauritius and Switzerland.
When it came to converting into actual trips undertaken for Indian tourists, Australia fell to ninth place, behind competitors such as the US, the UK and France, TA cited in its latest market profile for India.
It quoted a consumer research which found over one-third of Indian leisure tourists cited safety and security as their main motivation when selecting a travel destination while other important factors included world class beauty, value for money and family friendliness.
"Australia performs strongly in terms of its safety and security, world class beauty and interesting attractions among Indian leisure travellers. There is room for improvement with respect to Australia's associations with value for money, romance and good food and wine.
"Australia's coastline, wildlife and island experiences generate the greatest appeal for Indian travellers in terms of attractions, with aquatic wildlife rating as the preferred Australian experience for just under half of Indian respondents," TA said in its market profile for India.
It was further found that in 2014, 29 per cent of Indian visitors to Australia travelled on Singapore Airlines and 27 per cent on Malaysia Airlines.
"Last year, Air India has grown to 11 per cent market share, and close to Qantas' share at 12 per cent," it said, adding that Thai Airways share continued to decline which was currently at 6 per cent.
Direct capacity from India to Australia rose by 187 per cent following Air India launching Australian (Sydney/ Melbourne) services in August 2013 during 2014.
As of this year, there were over 2,000 qualified Australian specialists in India who were trained as front line travel sellers to sell Australia as tourist destination.
There were 196,600 visitors from India for calendar year 2014, an increase of 16.6 per cent compared to 2013. Visitors from India generated USD 0.8 billion in total expenditure last year.
The Tourism 2020 strategy has earlier estimated that India has the potential to grow to between $1.9 billion and $2.3 billion in total expenditure by 2020.