The nine European tourism bureaus with a presence down under came together, in partnership with Rail Europe, to promote the region to around 100 travel advisors in Sydney and Melbourne recently.
The “united front”, comprised of Atout France, the Italian National Tourist Board, Switzerland Tourism, Tourism Ireland, the Austrian National Tourist Office, Visit Monaco, Spain Tourism Board, Visit Portugal and VisitBritain, collaborated in a series of workshops to update advisors on their individual countries.
Rich Leonard from Rail Europe said the coming together of the tourism bureaus and Rail Europe was a wonderful opportunity to present Europe for 2024 to the travel trade.
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“We’ve all come through a very challenging few years and we’re all hopeful that 2024 will present plenty more opportunities to bring more people to Europe,” Leonard said.
The collaboration was driven by Rail Europe, the European Travel Commission (ETC) and VisitBritain, with the objective of putting the spotlight firmly on Europe as a whole. There are around 35 national tourist organisations (NTOs) that are members of the ETC.
Sofia Hansson, who heads Tourism Ireland locally, also Chairs the ETC in Australia. At the event in Sydney, she said the ETC was focused on the sustainable development of tourism to Europe.
This inaugural venture “brings together NTOs as one destination to the rest of the world, and presents a great opportunity to support the region collectively,” she said.
“When Australians travel to Europe they tend to visit at least three countries. It makes sense for us to work together to inspire travel advisors to put together broader itineraries for Europe.”
Hansson said visitor figures for Europe are edging closer to 2019 levels this year. They are not quite there yet as a whole but the ETC expects to see the recovery by 2024 as a whole.
She said for long-haul markets the recovery from the pandemic is forecast for 2025.
“Recovery from the Australian market has been a bit slower, mainly due to the capacity challenges that we looking at more positively now.” That includes Qantas’ recently announced new flights from Perth to Paris, launching ahead of the Paris Olympics next year, and is injected with further capacity and frequency increases through the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
“The summer months were particularly good and lifted figures this year. Some countries were really close to 2019 levels and others exceeded that mark.”
“Our appeal remains strong for long-haul travellers,” she said. “Our travel sentiment study shows culture and history are a big draw, and there’s a growing interest in rail around Europe, and slow travel.”
“Sustainability is close to ETC’s strategy,” she said.
“The Commission has a strong focus on that space and the responsible development of the tourism industry. Sustainability is at the core of the ETC’s framework, focused on treating visitors as guests and addressing expectations of visitors and locals in the destinations visited.”
Maria Sykes, Country Manager, Australia/NZ for VisitBritain reiterated that there was a common objective through the partnership with other ETC tourism offices, to lure Aussies to Europe for longer.
Sykes said the UK this year was projecting a record spend by overseas tourists, of 31 billion sterling, and Australia has “played a heavy role in that”, despite being slow out of the gate for outbound tourism in 2022.
“Australia punches above its weight, over the short 2022 period, Australia landed the fourth most valuable nation to the British visitor economy, worth over 1.1. billion sterling,” she said, with some 750,000 visitors.
This year, for the last quarter of 2023, Australia hit 3rd position.
“That’s absolutely remarkable because we are more valuable to Britain than France. France is 70 million people and just across the pond from Britain, and yet there’s 25 million Aussies and we’re just about as far away as you can be.”
“We’ve also broken records in the last quarter on visitation during the shoulder sesaon, with over 300,000 people.”
In 2024, VisitBritain will focus on Film and TV to lure tourists from around the world.
The Roadshow was a partnership between Rail Europe, the European Travel Commission (ETC) and VisitBritain.
Lead image: Pictured at the Sydney event, from left are: Peta Evans, VisitBritain; Sonia Holt, Switzerland Tourism; Sandra Babey, Switzerland Tourism; Cleclie Collas, Atout France; Alison Roberts-Brown, Visit Monaco; Kathrina Denk, Austrian National Tourist Board; Rachel Jones, Spain Tourism Board; Amelia Robertson, VisitBritain; Rich Leonard, Rail Europe; Sofia Hansson, Tourism Ireland and Emanuele Attanasio, Italian National Tourist Board. Not pictured but present were: Grant Robertson, Rail Europe and Gill Gaspar, Visit Portugal.
