Tourism Australia has unveiled one of the world’s most commercially focused ten-year tourism strategies—and its goal to double high-yield visitor spending by 2035 offers lessons for destinations everywhere.
Australia (Tourism Reporter) — There are tourism strategies that fill their executive summaries with promises of authentic experiences, sustainable futures, and unforgettable journeys—before arriving at targets so vague that success can only be measured after the fact.
Then there are strategies that begin with a number, identify the markets that will deliver it, explain how they will be reached, and set a deadline by which success will be judged.
Australia’s Tourism 2035 strategy—released this week as the successor to the country’s post-pandemic recovery framework and developed with global consulting firm L.E.K.—belongs firmly to the second category. Its commercial ambition is expressed with a clarity that every national tourism authority seeking greater investment should study.
Tourism Australia Managing Director Robin Mack said the strategy is designed to generate future demand by responding to changing traveller behaviour and intensifying global competition.
“This strategy sets an ambitious course to create and convert demand into high-value visitation to Australia by addressing factors influencing traveller choice, through harnessing technology and fostering partnerships and collaboration across the tourism sector,” Mack said. “Our vision is for Australia to be the first destination every traveller dreams of, and the one they ultimately choose. The goal is for Australia to double the expenditure generated by high-yield travellers to as much as $69 billion by 2035.”
That objective is unusually precise. Australia aims to increase high-yield visitor expenditure from AU$33 billion today to between AU$61 billion and AU$69 billion within a decade. The strategy identifies the mechanisms—better understanding traveller behaviour, technology, stronger partnerships, and more targeted marketing—and pairs them with independent analytical support from L.E.K., giving the projections greater commercial credibility than a typical government roadmap.
This is destination strategy written in the language of investment rather than aspiration. And the data behind it suggests the ambition is built on evidence, not optimism.
The Baseline: What AU$33 Billion in High-Yield Tourism Really Means
Before assessing where Tourism 2035 aims to take Australia, it is worth understanding the scale of the market it is already building upon.
International visitors contributed AU$57 billion in total overnight spend to the Australian economy in the past year. Of that total, AU$33 billion was generated across the four high-yield target segments at the heart of Tourism 2035: Holidaymakers, Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR), Working Holiday Makers, and Business Events. Overall, international visitation anchors more than 360,000 tourism businesses and supports over 720,000 jobs nationwide.
The AU$33 billion figure is not Australia’s total international tourism revenue. It represents the expenditure generated by the visitor segments Tourism Australia believes offer the greatest long-term commercial value. Holiday Makers drive leisure demand; VFR travellers typically stay longer and spend more across local communities; Working Holiday Makers contribute through extended stays, employment, and sustained local spending; while Business Events delegates consistently deliver some of the highest per-day expenditure in the visitor economy.
Robin Mack emphasised that high-yield does not simply mean luxury. It includes travellers who create greater economic value through longer stays, higher daily expenditure, or both.
That distinction is one of Tourism 2035’s greatest strategic strengths. Rather than narrowly pursuing affluent luxury visitors, Australia is targeting the visitor segments that deliver the highest overall economic contribution.
A Working Holiday Maker who spends twelve months living, working, and travelling across Australia may ultimately contribute far more to the economy than a luxury cruise passenger visiting for five days. One spends more per day; the other generates a far greater cumulative economic impact. By recognising both as high-value travellers—alongside Business Events delegates and traditional holidaymakers—Tourism 2035 builds its AU$61–69 billion ambition on commercial reality rather than marketing aspiration.
The Four Strategic Priorities: Where Tourism 2035 Will Be Won
Tourism Australia has organised Tourism 2035 around four strategic priorities. Together, they reveal not only what the organisation intends to do over the next decade, but how Australia expects to compete in an increasingly crowded global tourism marketplace.
The first priority is competitive positioning in the digital age. Tourism Australia plans to reshape its marketing strategy for both traditional travellers and AI-driven search and recommendation platforms, ensuring Australia remains visible as travel discovery shifts from search engines to generative AI.
This is arguably the strategy’s most forward-looking commitment. As more travellers ask AI assistants where to go rather than scrolling through search results, destination marketing organisations that fail to structure their content for AI discovery risk becoming progressively less visible. Tourism Australia’s decision to address AI discoverability now signals an understanding that the future battle for visitors will increasingly be fought through algorithms as much as advertising.
The second priority is aviation connectivity—the structural foundation on which the entire strategy depends. For an island nation located far from its major source markets, seat capacity is not simply a transport issue; it is a tourism growth strategy.
“As an island nation, aviation capacity remains critical to our industry success,” Robin Mack said.
Tourism Reporter’s coverage of ATE 2026 in Adelaide identified the scale of that challenge, with Australia requiring approximately 4.4 million additional international airline seats over the next decade to support Tourism 2035’s growth ambitions. Without those seats, the strategy’s expenditure targets become significantly harder to achieve.
The third priority focuses on dispersing visitor spending beyond Australia’s traditional gateways. International tourism has long been concentrated around Sydney, Melbourne, and the Great Barrier Reef, leaving many regional destinations under-visited despite their strong tourism assets.
Tourism 2035 addresses this by targeting high-yield travellers, whose longer stays and stronger appetite for authentic experiences naturally encourage broader geographic exploration. These visitors are far more likely to venture into destinations such as Tasmania, the Kimberley, or the Flinders Ranges, spreading tourism income across regional Australia while reducing pressure on established hotspots.
The fourth priority centres on technology, partnerships, and evidence-based planning. Working with global consulting firm L.E.K., Tourism Australia projects expenditure from its targeted visitor segments will rise from AU$33 billion in 2025 to between AU$61 billion and AU$69 billion by 2035.
The partnership itself strengthens the strategy’s credibility. Rather than relying solely on internal government projections, Tourism Australia has grounded its long-term targets in independent commercial analysis—reinforcing Tourism 2035 as an investment strategy as much as a destination marketing plan.
As Mack noted, a successful tourism industry delivers benefits far beyond visitor spending. It creates jobs across metropolitan and regional communities, supports businesses of every size, helps protect Australia’s natural and cultural assets, and strengthens local economic resilience. Tourism 2035 positions those outcomes not as by-products of tourism, but as the purpose of the strategy itself.
The Macro Trends Tourism 2035 Is Preparing For
Tourism Australia identifies five structural forces that will shape global travel over the next decade: geopolitical volatility, climate disruption, evolving aviation technology, changing traveller behaviour, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence on destination discovery and travel planning.
These are the same forces Tourism Reporter has tracked throughout 2026—from geopolitical tensions reshaping aviation networks and international visitor flows, to the rise of the coolcation economy, and the emergence of AI as a new gateway through which travellers discover destinations. Rather than treating these disruptions as future possibilities, Tourism 2035 recognises them as present-day realities that must be incorporated into long-term destination planning.
That institutional realism is one of the strategy’s greatest strengths. Tourism plans that assume today’s competitive environment will remain unchanged over a decade are often outdated before implementation begins. Tourism 2035 instead acknowledges uncertainty as a permanent feature of the operating landscape and builds flexibility into its long-term framework.
Geopolitical volatility is especially significant for Australia because of its reliance on Asia’s outbound travel markets. China, Japan, South Korea and India represent some of Australia’s most valuable international visitor segments—not simply because of arrival volumes, but because of their spending patterns. These travellers consistently generate higher yields through premium accommodation, luxury retail, fine dining, longer itineraries, and business travel.
Viewed through that lens, Tourism 2035’s ambition to double high-yield visitor expenditure is more than a revenue target. It is a strategy to deepen Australia’s share of Asia’s fastest-growing and highest-value outbound travel markets while strengthening resilience against an increasingly uncertain global environment.
The Competitive Context: Tourism 2035 in an Intensifying Global Race
Tourism 2035 is not being launched into a static marketplace. It enters one of the most competitive global tourism environments Australia has ever faced, where destinations are investing aggressively to attract the same high-value travellers.
Thailand’s Year of Transformation strategy, which Tourism Reporter examined in July, is targeting the same high-spending, experience-driven visitors identified by Tourism 2035 as Australia’s primary growth market. New Zealand’s own Tourism 2035 framework is pursuing similar yield-focused objectives, while Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, India’s expanding destination investment pipeline, and the GCC’s Grand Tours Visa all represent long-term strategies designed to capture a greater share of premium international travel.
Against that backdrop, Tourism Australia’s competitive response extends beyond destination marketing to strengthening its global distribution network.
Robin Mack described Australian Tourism Exchange (ATE) 2026 as the largest in the event’s history, bringing together buyers from 32 international markets and generating more than 55,000 business appointments between international travel buyers and Australian tourism operators over four days.
Those figures represent more than industry event statistics. They are evidence of Australia’s commercial reach within the global travel trade. Every buyer relationship expands market access, strengthens distribution channels, and increases the likelihood that Australia’s tourism products remain visible in an increasingly crowded international marketplace.
Ultimately, Tourism 2035’s ambition to double high-yield visitor expenditure will depend not only on attracting travellers, but on maintaining the trade partnerships that convert global demand into measurable visitor spending. ATE 2026 suggests Australia already possesses one of the strongest international tourism sales networks in the industry.
The Intelligence Takeaway: What Tourism 2035 Means Beyond Australia
For Tourism Reporter’s global readership—destination managers, tourism ministers, hospitality investors, aviation executives, and travel trade leaders—Tourism 2035 offers lessons that extend far beyond Australia’s borders.
The first is strategic. By defining its target market through visitor yield rather than luxury status, Australia has broadened its growth potential. High-yield tourism is no longer synonymous with ultra-wealthy travellers. It includes visitors who stay longer, spend more across local economies, explore beyond gateway cities, return frequently, and generate powerful word-of-mouth advocacy. That distinction gives the strategy far greater commercial scale.
The second lesson is technological. Tourism 2035 is among the first national tourism strategies to explicitly recognise AI-driven destination discovery as a competitive priority. As generative AI increasingly shapes travel decisions, destinations that fail to optimise their digital presence for AI recommendations risk becoming less visible in tomorrow’s visitor journey.
The third lesson is institutional. Developed with L.E.K. Consulting and supported by clearly defined expenditure targets, statistical baselines, and measurable outcomes, Tourism 2035 speaks the language of investors, airlines, and government finance departments. It replaces aspiration with evidence, making the case for long-term tourism investment far more persuasive.
Australia has done more than publish another tourism strategy. It has reframed tourism as a long-term investment proposition built on measurable yield, technological adaptation, and commercial discipline.
Whether Tourism 2035 achieves its AU$61–69 billion ambition will become clear over the next decade. But its influence on how other destinations design their own tourism strategies may begin much sooner.
Editor’s Note: Tourism Australia’s Tourism 2035 strategy was published on 6 August 2026, developed in partnership with consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting. Presented by Tourism Australia Managing Director Robin Mack at the Destination Australia 2026 conference, the 10-year roadmap targets growth in high-yield international visitor expenditure from AU$33 billion in 2025 to between AU$61 billion and AU$69 billion by 2035.
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