March news

I spent a lot of time with Tourism Australia and Tourism New Zealand this month at Unite Pacific trade show and at ITB in Berlin.  Both reported strong demand but still reduced numbers compared to pre-Covid figures.  Seat capacity and high-priced airfares is still the issue and while this will drop a bit in 2025, I can’t see us getting back to 2018/19 rates.  The same can be said for land products, rates will drop a bit in 2025 but not by much.  Consequently, the agents are reporting far higher revenue per customer, which is nice in the short term, but we want more people going to NZ/Australia to increase returns and word of mouth.

Germany has had a very tough start to 2024 with air capacity at 60% - 70% of 2019 levels and this shows in most agent’s figures.  Turkish airways are now flying into Australia which should create far better value rates than the present options.

Some great PR for Australia at the moment with the Formula One, Population 11 on Netflix and   Simon Reeve on BBC1:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01xzcwd/australia-with-simon-reeve

April and May:

April trip around Europe with Tourism Australia and the regions seeing and training agents in Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Sweden.