Tourism
Australia and Etihad Airways have signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) aimed at bringing more visitors from the Middle
East, UK and Europe to Australia by leveraging the airline’s
expanding international network.
Under
the new strategic marketing agreement, the signatories will together
invest up to A$6 million over the next three years in a range of
cooperative programs targeting visitors from the Middle East, UK and
Europe.
Tourism
Australia Managing Director Andrew McEvoy pointed to the airline’s
recent decision to upgrade its three-times-per-week Brisbane service
to a daily operation as evidence of its continued Australian
expansion plans.
"In
just five years of flying to Australia, Etihad Airways has
demonstrated a strong and growing commitment to its Australian
operations. Thanks to its rapidly expanding international network,
Etihad Airways is feeding increasingnumbers of
passengers onto Australia bound flights through its Abu Dhabi hub,
particularly from Australia's traditional high volume markets of the
UK and Europe,” Mr McEvoy said.
Etihad
Airways’ President and Chief
Executive Officer James Hogan said Australia
was strategically important to Etihad Airways and contributed
significantly to the airline's bottom line.
"We
not only have 16 per cent of our global seat capacity dedicated to
the route but also major investments in community assets like
Melbourne’s Etihad Stadium,” Mr Hogan said.
Hr
Hogan said the airline’s game-changing partnership and codeshare
strategy was one of the key enablers of its investment in Australian
tourism and specifically, the new strategic marketing agreement with
Tourism Australia.
“Tourism
Australia is doing an impressive job creating demand throughout
Europe for business and leisure travel
to Australia.
Our partnerships with airberlin, Air France-KLM, Alitalia and Czech
Airlines, are tapping into this demand and, significantly, are
offering flights to Australia from destinations throughout
Europe that were previously offline.
“On
top of that, our partnership with Virgin Australia adds another
powerful dimension to the
marketing of
Australian tourism. As well as giving overseas visitors a wider
choice of destinations within Australia, helping to
disperse them around the country, it also delivers major benefits to
the Australian economy, domestic tourism operators and regional
communities.
“There
is a great natural synergy between the MoU with Tourism Australia and
our airline partnerships, particularly the one with Virgin Australia.
In fact, Etihad Airways and Tourism Australia have already started
planning a majorcampaign for
the first half of 2013 – together with Virgin Australia – in
order to leverage the synergies of the airlines’ joint networks
and cooperative
marketing spends,”
Mr Hogan said.
Mr
McEvoy added that
markets covered by the arrangement aligned strongly with Tourism
Australia's balanced portfolio approach and were critical to
Australian tourism achieving its Tourism 2020 strategic goal of
doubling annual overnight visitor expenditure to up to A$140 billion
by the end of the decade.
Under
the new
marketing partnership
and in line with its continuing efforts to speak with ‘one voice’
in its international
marketing,
Tourism Australia and Etihad Airways will jointly seek involvement of
the States and Territories in future cooperative campaigns.