Tourism Australia welcomes Air Asia X announcement

Tourism Australia has welcomed the recent announcement by Malaysian-based carrier Air Asia X to launch future daily services between Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, as a continuum of its strategic year 2020 approach to foster more new international flights from key source destinations in Asia.

 

Expressing his approval on the announcement, managing director, Tourism Australia, Andrew McEvoy said one of the keys to which Australian tourism can best align to achieve its 2020 growth goals is to have ongoing growth in sustainable international air services, and this was being achieved.

 

“Malaysia is an all critical market, now representing Australia’s seventh largest and one of our fastest growing,” McEvoy said.

 

“As seen with Air Asia X’s past introduction of new long haul flights into Australia, and now via its latest growth announcement for Sydney flying, we foresee a future positive outcome of both greater visitor numbers and new consumers visiting Australia, through this new service,” he continued.

 

“An average Malaysian tourist in Australia now spends almost $4,700 during their stay and vitally they are amongst the highest repeat visitors to our country. 

“As part of a continued ‘team Australia’ approach to grow our international air capacity, in particular our links to Asia, Tourism Australia welcomes this new daily flight offering.”

 

Direct weekly frequencies from Malaysia to Australia would now number up to 87 per week with the additional of Air Asia X’s new daily Sydney service. Malaysian Airlines and Air Asia X, which are now in a strategic tie-up, represent the majority of flights and the existing growth drivers on the Malaysian-Australia route.

 

“This new strategic alliance will be a hugely important platform from which to take our marketing message further into Asia, and on the back of significant increases in aviation capacity,” continued McEvoy.

 

Tourism Australia believes that the Malaysian market, with existing annual expenditure of around $1.1 billion has the potential to double to between $2 billion and $2.5 billion in total yearly expenditure by 2020.

-TTG MENA.