Tourism Australia is announcing a new campaign to target and attract high spending visitors from India - a lucrative market that was damaged by much publicised violent attacks on Indian students in Australia.
Repairing Australia's image problem is just one challenge. Tourism Australia wants to triple the numbers of visitors by 2020.
Andrew McEvoy, Tourism Australia's managing director : We took a view that we should look at India through the eyes of Indians when we market over them. So we've used an MTV Bollywood couple who had their honeymoon in Australia as sort of the front people of our advertising.
So we've done a lot of work to rebuild the image and I think the High Commission has done a great job over there. So we're certainly back on track and there's big opportunities to come.
PETER RYAN: Is it possible to put a dollar figure on Indian tourism over the next several years looking ahead to 2020?
ANDREW MCEVOY: It's worth about $800/$820 million to the Australian economy now. There's probably around 145,000 Indians coming, you know, that's including students and holiday, visiting friends and relatives and business.
We think by 2020 that could almost triple to about $2.4 billion at its best. And it would mean there'd be 400,000 Indians coming to our country and high-yielding visitors, and a mix again of education, holiday, business and visiting friends and relatives.
PETER RYAN: Just on that image issue, advertising and marketing is still seen as a weak spot for Tourism Australia.
And one criticism that your chairman Geoff Dixon is having to counter is that Australia is seen by some as the "dumb blonde" of the world - attractive but shallow and one-dimensional. Is that fair?
ANDREW MCEVOY: I think people like Geoff and I do take offence at that because Australia's reputation and image is outstanding. And one thing that's not broken is probably the appeal of the destination.
The thing we've got to work harder on is, have we got to the right product mix in Australia, are we good enough in terms of quality of service and have we got the access to the products through aviation, cruise shipping and that sort of stuff.
PETER RYAN: You have the voice from Tourism Australia. Then you have others from various state and territory bodies. So you agree that some greater clarity is needed when it comes to that marketing message?
ANDREW MCEVOY: We are a bit inconsistent in the way we market our country offshore. We do often speak with too many voices and there's plenty of people you know representing our interests. And we've just got to get that in a bit more united, a bit more consistent.
PETER RYAN: Australia remains a top global destination for tourists, despite the impact of the high Australian dollar.
But there are criticisms about out-dated properties, poor service and in some cases unexciting shopping. That sounds like quite a to-do list to turn around on the image front.
ANDREW MCEVOY: Look I think as an industry we're pretty good at talking ourselves down. I would argue that the products and experiences in Australia are massively appealing to a global consumer.
Can we improve? Always. But I think that's happening. And I think the Australian industry is growing. You know (inaudible) in capital cities is strong and I think our experience does stack up really, really well.
