What if the visitation number your board tracks is the wrong one?
Australia’s tourism recovery makes a strong case for asking that question.
Today, the country welcomes roughly 94% of its pre-COVID visitor volume but generates 120% of its 2019 on-ground spend. Fewer people are spending more money. It is a result that forces a complete rethink of traditional strategy.
The pressure to report massive visitor volume is familiar territory in travel and tourism marketing. Yet that goal often conflicts with the slower, harder work of building tourism economies that deliver meaningful, sustainable growth.
The space between those two objectives is exactly where the most important strategic conversations are happening right now.
Chris Allison, Vice President of the Americas and New Zealand at Tourism Australia, has spent years managing that balance at one of the world’s most recognized destination marketing organizations.
We sat down with him to discuss the strategic thinking behind Australia’s recovery, high-yield traveler profiles, the say vs. do gap between sustainable intent and confirmed bookings, and what it means to market a destination when AI agents are increasingly the first stop in the trip-planning process.
Australia is generating more visitor spend with fewer visitors. What is it about the traveler you’re attracting now that makes that possible, and is that the traveler you’re deliberately targeting?
The fact that our on-ground visitor spend has surged to 120% of 2019 levels, even while volume is still hovering in the mid-90s, is a phenomenal testament to the resilience of our industry and the intentionality of our strategy.
We put this dramatic economic return down to two main factors. First, the global traveler is staying longer. The post-pandemic mindset prioritizes fewer, deeper journeys, meaning visitors maximize their time on the ground. Second, we have seen an incredible appetite for premiumization. Visitors aren’t just booking a room; they are investing in high-value, immersive experiences, from luxury lodges and private charter flights to deep-dive First Nations storytelling and bespoke culinary tours.
To sustain this momentum through our Tourism 2035 Strategy, we are looking far beyond just big wallets. We are targeting specific behavioral archetypes. For us, a high-yielding traveler isn’t just a traditional luxury leisure guest. It includes the Conscious Traveler, who purposefully seeks out sustainable and culturally rich experiences and is willing to pay a premium for them, and the Business Event Delegate, who commands a high daily spend and often extends their trip for leisure. The common trait across our target archetypes is a mindset of deep engagement, curiosity and regional dispersal.
Is spending more important than volume? Our stance is that yield is the healthier metric for long-term sustainability, but volume still matters. Chasing volume for the sake of headcount can lead to overtourism, strained local infrastructure and a diluted brand. Prioritizing yield ensures our tourism operators thrive economically while minimizing the environmental footprint. But we still need a baseline of volume to sustain aviation capacity, fill diverse accommodation tiers and support jobs across the entire ecosystem.
Our ultimate goal isn’t to choose between them, but to use high-yield strategies to ensure that every visitor who steps off the plane delivers maximum value back to the Australian community, and enjoys a rich and memorable experience.
Volume and stewardship can feel like competing priorities in destination marketing. How has Tourism Australia found a way to treat them as the same job?
The tension between driving immediate visitor numbers and fostering long-term stewardship is one of the defining challenges of modern destination management. However, we don’t view them as opposing forces; we view them as a dual mandate. Immediate volume drives the economic vitality that allows our industry to reinvest in the slower, deeper work of sustainability. The key is ensuring that growth is managed, rather than just chased.
As a nation home to a rich First Nations culture that dates back over 65,000 years, the oldest continuing living culture in the world, we have an inherent responsibility to protect and nurture our land. The principles of caring for Country have roots in practices passed down over millennia, and they serve as our ultimate guide today.
Over the past few years, our strategy has focused on translating this philosophy into a two-pronged approach. First, we work on the ground to help operators embed and articulate sustainable credentials. Second, we advocate externally, showcasing the incredible work our industry is doing to drive positive environmental and community impact.
To scale this, we recently launched an industry-wide sustainable tourism initiative called “Green is Our Gold.” Built around five core principles (Celebrate Community, Embrace Culture, Preserve Place, Respect Wildlife and Take Care), this platform creates a unified promise for our industry while clearly setting expectations for travelers. By aligning economic goals with a robust framework for visitor behavior, we ensure that as visitor numbers grow, our commitment to stewardship grows with them.
The willingness to pay for sustainable experiences is there in the data. What’s standing between that consumer intent and an actual booking, and how are you helping operators bridge it?
To turn that consumer intent into a confirmed booking, Tourism Australia is helping local operators bridge the gap through a three-part strategy: verification, integration and narrative.
First, we are tackling “green-hushing,” where operators are doing incredible work but are afraid to talk about it for fear of scrutiny. In collaboration with Austrade and state tourism bodies, we have rolled out the National Sustainable Tourism Toolkit and partnered with organizations like EarthCheck and Ecotourism Australia via the Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard. This gives our small-to-medium operators an easy, verified roadmap to back up their claims with institutional integrity. When a traveler sees a trusted, verified credential at the point of sale, it removes the cynicism that often stalls a booking.
Second, we are integrating these products directly into the global distribution pipeline. A sustainable itinerary can’t just exist on a niche blog; it has to be on the screen of the major online travel agencies and inbound tour operators. We are actively working to ensure our certified operators are digitally optimized so that global distribution networks can easily surface them when a traveler filters for sustainable options.
Finally, through our “Green is Our Gold” platform, we are reframing the marketing narrative. We don’t sell sustainability as an obligation or a compromise; we sell it as a premium upgrade. We connect the dots for the traveler to show that a sustainable choice means a fresher culinary experience, a more exclusive interaction with wildlife, or a deeper, more meaningful connection with First Nations storytellers. By making sustainable choices synonymous with a better holiday, we transform a passive “willingness to pay” into an active, confirmed booking.
You’re building demand on a world stage while simultaneously serving the operators who have to deliver on that promise. How do those two responsibilities connect in practice?
At Tourism Australia, we focus on three core strategic pillars that endure across all of the work that we do: Create Demand, Convert Demand, and Champion Industry.
Because of this framework, we don’t view global marketing and domestic industry leadership as competing priorities where one is more important than the other. Instead, they are two sides of the same coin. We cannot successfully showcase Australia to the world if our operators on the ground aren’t supported, resilient, and world-class.
The first part of our mandate is Create Demand. This is the deep and broad work we do in international markets to build our brand and drive preference. Our North Star here is simple: to ‘win in consideration.’
Our research shows that when consumers are actively planning a long-haul trip, they typically hold only one to three destinations in their consideration set. Australia must be on that list if we are ever going to convert aspiration into a booking. Because we operate in a highly competitive category, our ability to stand out is paramount. This is why we continue to evolve our ‘Come and Say G’day’ campaign, partnering with iconic talent like Robert Irwin to cut through the global noise. But creating that demand is only half the battle.
Through our third pillar, Champion Industry, we act as the bridge between that global audience and our local operators closer to home. We translate our international market insights, consumer research, and digital tools into actionable resources for our 300,000 tourism businesses.
By empowering our local industry to meet the shifting expectations of the global traveler, we ensure that the incredible promise of our international marketing matches the reality of the on-the-ground experience. One cannot succeed without the other.
Australia has an incredible 63% repeat visitation rate from the U.S. Are there elements of your marketing strategy that target the first timer vs. the repeat visitor?
We believe we have a strong benchmark for repeat visitation, particularly for a market like the USA, where we often face challenges around misperceptions of distance. But it speaks highly to the affinity travellers feel with Australia once they visit for the first time.
Given this, we have to ensure our marketing speaks to both the first-time and the repeat visitor. We essentially run a two-track strategy built on the concepts of breadth and depth.
For the first-time visitor, our strategy is about conversion through iconic breadth. They want the bucket-list Australia they’ve dreamed of: the Sydney Opera House, the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru. Our marketing here focuses on urgency, frictionless planning, and introducing the foundational ‘Come and Say G’day’ brand promise.
For the repeat visitor, the strategy pivots entirely to geographical and seasonal depth. They already know and love the brand; now we need to show them the chapters they skipped. We shift our messaging away from the icons and toward regional dispersal and niche passions—like Tasmania’s culinary scene, Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef, or deep-dive Indigenous cultural tours. First-timers come for the geography; repeaters return for the lifestyle.
Dispersing travelers to remote Australia is a strategic win. How do you make sure the reality of those destinations lives up to what your marketing promised, particularly luxury experiences?
Managing expectations in remote areas requires a fundamental shift in how we define “luxury.” If a traveler goes into the Outback expecting a marble bathroom and a five-star concierge, we’ve failed in our marketing.
Our strategy is to proactively reframe luxury from material opulence to exclusivity of experience. We teach the traveler that in remote Australia, luxury isn’t a thread count. It’s the luxury of silence, of unobstructed views of the Milky Way, or having exclusive access to a sacred site with a Traditional Owner. We don’t hide the ruggedness; we celebrate it as part of Australia’s remote, premium appeal. By setting the narrative early through transparent content and storytelling, we ensure travelers arrive looking for connection, not perfection. Authenticity is the amenity.
“Marketing to Machines” is one of your priorities for the year ahead. What does that actually mean in practice for a destination with as much cultural depth as Australia?
Marketing to Machines requires ensuring our data is as rich, nuanced and authentic as the destination itself, rather than letting algorithms dictate our story.
If an AI agent is looking for a generic beach holiday, it might look at a spreadsheet of temperatures and prices. Australia’s identity exists beyond data points. Visitors find it in the intangible feel of a place, like the storytelling of an Indigenous guide, the distinct warmth of an Aussie welcome or the sensory footprint of the Outback.
Our strategy is to feed the machines better ingredients. By structuring our digital infrastructure around rich metadata, indexing not just “hotels” or “flights” but local narratives, sustainability practices and deeply niche, uncommoditized experiences, we ensure that when an AI optimizes for a “life-changing journey,” Australia remains the definitive answer. We teach the machines to understand our soul by translating our emotional resonance into structured, discoverable data.
Meet Chris Allison
A strategic, results orientated and commercially astute leader with a passion for success, Chris Allison has worked in the travel industry for more than a decade. During that time, he has developed a deep expertise across multiple sales channels and marketing disciplines to become a valued senior manager with skills and experience bridging both online and offline sales as well as marketing.
Allison joined Tourism Australia in 2019 and was appointed Vice President, The Americas in July 2021. He leads a team of 15 across the US and Canada, setting overarching market strategy and overseeing the direction of all Marketing, PR, Business Events, Corporate Services, Partnerships and Distribution operations.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Allison kept Australia central to the North American conversation, investing in the market (Australia’s third largest source market for international visitation and the second most valuable for spend) to keep content in front of consumers. Across 2022 and 2023, he was instrumental to major large-scale marketing initiatives for Tourism Australia—leading the North American roll out of campaigns like Don’t Go Small, Go Australia, and most recently, Come and Say G’day.
Allison’s previous roles include Country Manager in the US and Country Manager in Canada for Air New Zealand, where Allison strategically managed all sales, marketing and airline partnership activity for the North America outbound market. At Air New Zealand, he managed a team of 35, generating annual revenues of $350 million on a marketing budget of $5 million.
As an individual who is driven by challenge, Allison’s proven track record for success has emerged through consistent achievement and exceeding of sales targets by developing, implementing and executing business strategies as well as building and leading successful cross-functional and high-performing teams. As Tourism Australia continues its post-pandemic recovery, Allison’s innovative efforts in the North American market will be essential.
