Australia may offer free flights to tourists
Ferry Online Travel News 12/03/2009
The country is considering the plan to increase international visitor numbers to help stimulate the economy.
Tourist arrival numbers have been significantly impacted by the global economic downturn.
For those tourists taking advantage of the free flights, there would only be one condition attached – and that is that they would spend freely at hotels, restaurants and shops during their time in Australia.
The Age newspaper has reported that under the scheme, called the "Mayday Project", participating airlines would offer deeply discounted rates to the government and the flights would be made available to international tourists. It is expected that the government will consider the proposal this week.
Across the country, the number of overseas visitors fell by 30,000 in 2008, down to 5.1 million. Of those, 2.04 million indicated that they were in Australia specifically “on holiday” – a decline of 141,000 from the year before.
The project is the brainchild of Glenn Millen, who is the innovation director of Independent Tourism Holdings. He feels that the free flights, combined with the novelty of the idea and the favourable exchange rate, would make it likely to succeed.
"We can really limit the impact of the recessionary slide on tourism through this," Millen said.
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