ATE 2024, the largest event in its history, has officially begun in Melbourne. Karryon reports from the showroom floor.
ATE 2024 has begun at the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre. For the ninth time in the history of ATE, Melbourne is the host city – last staging the major trade tourism event in 2015.
ATE 2024 marks the largest event in its 44-year history. Overall, 2,600 delegates are in attendance including 1,200 seller delegates representing 620 seller organisations (with 60 first time sellers).
There are 720 global buyers from 37 countries representing 602 buyer companies, including 109 first time buyers. Together, these groups will be conducting 50,000 appointments over the four-day event.
More than 80 international media from all around the world are being hosted at ATE 2024, along with local media, including Karryon.
Phillipa Harrison, Managing Director of Tourism Australia, welcomed guests on the showroom floor; and an official Welcome to Country was performed to officially greet guests onto Naarm country.
The Hon. Don Farrell, Federal Minister Trade and Tourism and Special Minister of State addressed the delegates.
“Later on today, we’ll be having a meeting of all of the tourism ministers where we will look at how we can help the industry continue the expansion, particularly in the post COVID era. I have this prediction that by the end of this year, tourism will be back in this country and we will have had more tourists come to Australia than the pre COVID time. I think we’ve got a really good future to look forward to,” he said.
Victorian Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events, Steve Dimopoulos also welcomed guests to Victoria.
Addressing media delegates at a press conference The Hon. Don Farrell acknowledged that Australia has been through difficult times.
“There’s no doubt that Australian tourism and the tourism industry has been through some tough times over the last few years – not least of course the COVID pandemic. But the good news is that the industry is recovering well and we know that the many opportunities that the ATE presents to all of the overseas buyers is going to be critical to the full recovery in Australia of this industry,” said Minister Farrell.
Tourism Australian Managing Director Phillipa Harrison spoke at the press conference, saying that Tourism Australia has focused on the 15 key markets that represent about 80 per cent of inbound tourism.
“It’s more than just business to business appointments…we also have an aviation hub and that keeps going from strength to strength. We’ve had it going for four years now…. we actually have 31 Airlines here and all 17 international airports. Obviously our aviation story is so important. We’re an island a long way from anywhere….aviation is crucial to us, so it’s great to have that program here,” said Harrison.
Aviation is playing a key part of the story, currently hovering at around 100 per cent, Harrison noted, while looking at the markets that had recovered.
“India and Korea are above pre pandemic levels. Other markets are taking a little bit more time to come back but we’re really positive that they’re on the way. China is an exceptionally large market for us….we’re really positive about that market and in fact all markets,” she said.
Harrison said the Chinese carriers are all coming back and we’re sitting around 90 per cent from China. She also spoke of new routes such as Turkish Airlines for the first time flying from Melbourne; and she mentioned inaugural Perth to Paris Qantas flights commencing in July 2024, just before the Paris Olympics.
A solutions hub is also present at ATE with tech solutions, industry associations, and groups dealing with sustainability and accessible tourism.
“As we move away from talking about recovery and moving into the future, we are very much turning our minds as an industry to what does sustainable growth into the future look like, and how do we grow our industry responsibly in a meaningful way,” said Harrison
Harrison says Tourism Australia will be focussed on strongly building Australia’s indigenous tourism offering; growing accessible tourism (with one in four travellers having some sort of accessibility needs); telling the story of how Australia does premium differently with a strong sense of place; the growth of self-drive holidays (with SE Asian markets more interested in self drive holidays); and a focus on agri-tourism.
Harrison also discussed distribution and AI.
“I’ve been in the industry for nearly 30 years now and we’ve been talking about disintermediation, which is basically getting rid of the middleman and the consumer going directly to the product for a long time now,” she said.
“Maybe we’re at a point here with AI where that can happen but actually, what we’re seeing is that people still want to talk to somebody when they’re travelling across the world and that is why we’ve got 700 buyers here and 1500 Australians sellers,” said Harrison.
“Distribution is still an incredibly important part of our network and part of the team who sell Australia so we’re very focused on it. But we’re having a look at what some of the some of the changes that are happening in the industry that really are speeding up at the moment, particularly with AI doing all sorts of interesting things in our industry. We’re working on a piece of work called ‘Distribution 2035’ which we shall have out some time later this year,” said Harrison.
Brendan McClements CEO of Visit Victoria McClements acknowledged that Victoria, like the rest of Australia, was a little bit behind where it was pre pandemic.
“But we think there’s roughly $16 billion for Victoria, over the next four years, if we can do what our job is to do,” he said.
McClements also says that Melbourne has a really good opportunity for growth, with international seat capacity back past 100 per cent and Melbourne now having Australia’s largest hotel market with 26,121 rooms – which is 20.9 per cent higher than January 2020.
He spoke of the three recent Taylor Swift concerts in Melbourne and the opportunity it represented to tourism.
“It was an interesting phenomenon. It showed an odd 260,000 people over three nights in Melbourne for the concerts and we were able to digest that. Victoria was able to accommodate 60,000 people flying in planes and finding a place to stay without a hiccup. We have the capacity to add volume and growth very quickly,” he said.
ATE 2024 will conclude on Thursday 24 May.
For more information, visit events.tourism.australia
