Chinese visitors on Australia's mind at the moment

Canberra (Australia): The Australian government has used the fourth day of its "largest ever" trade mission to China to launch a revolutionary new-look website to help attract Chinese visitors to Australia and New Zealand.

The website, found at "australia.cn", aims to capture a greater slice of the Chinese tourism market for Australia, and was launched as part of Australia Week in China (AWIC) by Tourism Minister Richard Colbeck and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, media reports said.

AWIC is giving thousands of Australian businesses a platform to introduce services into Asia's fastest growing economy, and Colbeck said Australia's ties with China were closer than ever before, it was important to advertise the best the land down under has to offer.

He said the new website would enable Tourism Australia to "better target and convert" potential visitors to Australia.

"This new website will play a crucial role in helping realize the growth potential of the extremely important Chinese market, expected to be worth more than 9.95 billion U.S. dollars by 2020," the Xinhua news agency quoted Colbeck, as saying.

Colbeck further said, "Last year, Australia welcomed over a million Chinese visitors, up 22 percent on the previous year, and Chinese visitors spent 45 percent more than 2014.

He said, "The refreshed site has established a new benchmark in digital destination marketing, showcasing a number of innovations which will help keep Australia ahead of the curve in this highly competitive tourism market."

Colbeck said the website was developed with the Chinese consumer in mind, and therefore was a mobile-driven site which would allow visitors to browse on-the-go.

In conjunction with the launch of the new website, the Tourism Minister joined Transport Minister Darren Chester to unveil a new, 4.5 million U.S dollar agreement between Tourism Australia and Air China on Thursday.

The Memorandum of Understating (MoU) includes a deal to advertize Australia throughout the Air China network, while the Chinese flag carrier will be given priority for further air routes between the two nations.

Colbeck said the deal with Air China would ensure there is enough air capacity for all visitors intent on coming to Australia.

"Record visitor arrivals from China show the Government's pro-growth policies, combined with a targeted marketing strategy is paying dividends," Colbeck said in a joint statement.

"The government's efforts to increase capacity, coupled with our streamlining of visa applications and making tourism infrastructure a National Investment Priority is ensuring we cater for growth.

"The year ending February 2016 saw a 22 percent growth in Chinese visitor arrivals, reaching over 1 million in a 12 month period for the first time ever. China is now poised to overtake New Zealand as our top visitor arrivals market.

"China is one of our most important tourism markets spending over 6.35 billion U.S dollars in 2015, up 45 percent on the previous year and expected to be worth more than 9.95 billion U.S. dollars by 2020."

Meanwhile, Chester said Australia was "committed to ensuring (it) has the aviation capacity available to meet future demand into and out of foreign markets, and to position Australia as a prime tourism destination in our region."

Colbeck added that Australia's hotel sector and airports would be upgrading infrastructure between now and 2020 in order to cope with the expected influx of visitors.

"Obviously there are some infrastructure issues that we need to manage and there's a strong growth in the development of hotel infrastructure for example at the moment," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

"There's been questions asked around airport infrastructure and how we might continue to work on that and obviously that's something we can talk about (here in China).

There is continuing obligation for us to keep on working on those supply side issues because the demand as you indicated is going to continue to grow."

Australia Week in China continues until Friday evening.