Qantas, Destination NSW renew partnership

Qantas has signed a fresh three-year agreement with Destination NSW worth $28 million to jointly promote travel to the state.

The new three-year deal extends a relationship that kicked off in 2013, when the pair agreed to spend $30 million on joint activities in what at the time was the largest tourism and major events marketing partnership in the state’s history.

The focus on the new deal, announced on July 19, would be to bring in more visitors to NSW from the United States, United Kingdom, China, South East Asia, Japan and New Zealand, Qantas and Destination NSW said in a joint statement.

“As the largest private investor in Australian tourism, it’s a really exciting time for us to be investing to attract more visitors to NSW, particularly with the relatively low Australian dollar and the number of visitors from key markets like China and the US at an all-time high,” Qantas International chief executive Gareth Evans said in a statement.

“We know that online and social media campaigns are really effective at inspiring more people to travel to Australia, so that will be a big part of our focus.”

NSW Minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events Stuart Ayres said the state’s 3.6 million overseas visitors in the 12 months to March 2016 spent about $9 billion.

“Offering our visitors exciting major events and safe, high quality air travel through key industry partners including Qantas are critical as we work towards our goal of doubling overnight visitor expenditure to NSW by 2020,” Ayres said.

The initial partnership with Destination NSW came after Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce in late 2012 withdrew about $44 million of marketing support to Tourism Australia, saying at the time it was no longer possible to work with the organisation given its then-chairman Geoff Dixon was among a group of investors who were pushing for change at the airline.

However, in June 2015 Dixon stepped down as chairman. And in January 2016, Qantas teamed up with Tourism Australia to promote some of the country’s most beautiful locations through a new safety video.

“We always said the reason we weren’t working with Tourism Australia back in 2012 was there was a conflict of interest with the chairman that was there,” Joyce told Fairfax Media’s Traveller website in January.

“There’s a new chairman and CEO and we felt the timing was appropriate for working together again.”

Qantas also had partnerships with state-based tourism bodies in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and Northern Territory.