Australia opens first Tourism Office in Mumbai

Mumbai, Nov 3 (UNI) Tourism Australia's (TA) first office in India was opened here today by Australia Minister for Tourism Martin Ferguson.

''The office will act as an important point of contact for Indian travel trade, which is one of Australia's fastest growing markets, and provide information on Australia's leisure and business tourism product,'' Mr Ferguson said.

TA will also launch a multi-media campaign, including ''Australia.

Come Walkabout'' audio-visual advertisement, to attract visitors from India. TA has set a target of 1,35,000 visitors from India for 2008-09 and expects 1,14,000 visitors by the year-end, he said.

Analysts expect India to become Australia's fifth largest tourism market by 2017 at an average growth rate of 16.5 per cent. India is currently the 12th largest market in terms of visitor numbers and 10th largest in Total Inbound Economic Value, Mr Ferguson added.

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