Earlier this year, Marquee Limousines was in the room when Tourism Australia shared its ten-year strategy, Tourism 2035. This covers what the strategy sets out, and what it asks of the businesses that move visitors once they land.
What is Tourism 2035?
Tourism 2035 is Tourism Australia’s ten-year strategy for inbound leisure and business events travel, setting expenditure targets across three horizons to 2035 and naming four priorities for increased focus and investment. The four priorities are marketing to humans and machines, showcasing Australia’s breadth of experience, capitalising on the major events runway, and defining a distinctive luxury positioning for Australia.
Tourism contributed $81.1 billion to Australian GDP in 2024-25, around 2.9 per cent of the national total. The inbound leisure and business events spend Tourism Australia is directly responsible for makes up $33 billion of that. The economic modelling behind the targets was carried out by L.E.K. Consulting in December 2025, covering the top 30 markets in detail.
How much is inbound tourism expected to grow by 2035?
Tourism Australia has set the 2035 target as a band, projecting inbound leisure and business events expenditure to rise from $33 billion in 2025 to between $61 billion and $69 billion. The distance between the two ends of that band is $8 billion of annual expenditure.
What are the three horizons in the strategy?
Tourism Australia has divided the decade into three horizons, each with an expenditure target and an industry check-in at the end: $41 to $43 billion by 2028, $49 to $53 billion by 2031, and $61 to $69 billion by 2035. Horizon One runs from 2026 to 2028 and requires compound annual growth of between 6.9 and 8.3 per cent.
Tourism Australia has said the structure exists so it can assess performance over shorter timeframes and refine its approach, rather than waiting a decade to measure results.
Who is Tourism Australia targeting?
Tourism Australia’s target audience is high-yielding travellers across four segments, of which luxury travellers and business events visitors carry the most value per visit. High-yielding leisure travellers represent a global pool of around 80 million people. Luxury travellers sit at the top of that range, defined in the strategy as those spending more than $1,200 AUD per person per day.
The remaining segments are working holiday makers, who spend less per day but stay an average of 161 days and travel further into regional Australia than most visitors, and leisure travellers visiting friends and relatives.
Why do business events matter so much in this strategy?
International business events visitors spent an average of 56 per cent more per night than leisure visitors in 2025, and Tourism Australia runs a dedicated unit, Business Events Australia, to grow the segment. Business events travellers also arrive midweek and in shoulder season, when leisure demand is lightest.
For ground handling, the segment has a distinct operating shape. Delegates arrive in concentrated waves against a fixed program start time, then move as groups between venues on a schedule set by the organiser. Our corporate chauffeur service and roadshow work are built around that timing.
What is the Green and Gold decade?
The Green and Gold decade is Tourism Australia’s term for the run of major sporting events hosted in Australia through to 2032, and capitalising on it is one of the four strategic priorities. The pipeline includes the 2026 AFC Women’s Asian Cup, the 2027 Men’s Rugby World Cup and Netball World Cup, the 2028 T20 Men’s Cricket World Cup, the 2029 Women’s Rugby World Cup, and the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Tourism Australia’s stated aim is for the attention these events generate to reach destinations beyond the host cities, with sustained demand after the events themselves. Host cities and dates are confirmed years ahead, which makes the resulting arrival peaks among the most plannable demand in the calendar. Our event chauffeur service covers that scheduled, high-volume movement.
Why is luxury one of the four priorities?
Defining a distinctive luxury positioning for Australia is the fourth priority, and the strategy states that Australian luxury marketing is currently fragmented, with operators and regions promoting their offers in isolation without the scale or coherence to compete in global markets. Tourism Australia notes that global definitions of luxury have shifted away from traditional opulence towards experiences offering connection to nature, rarity, craftsmanship and cultural depth.
Tourism Australia has committed to four actions: quantifying the size of the luxury audience and Australia’s share of it, agreeing a single national definition of Australian luxury with every state and territory tourism organisation, encouraging higher daily expenditure from high-value travellers, and encouraging greater regional dispersal.
Why is aviation described as the critical constraint?
Australia needs an additional 4.4 million inbound airline seats by 2035 to reach the lower end of the target band, building through 1.5 million more by 2028 and 2.8 million by 2031. Tourism Australia’s core 16 markets are expected to carry 3.6 million of that total.
Average load factors on inbound services sit at around 80 per cent, so one in five seats already flies empty, and the majority of booked inbound seats carry Australians returning home rather than international visitors. Converting existing capacity therefore matters alongside adding new routes.
Every one of those seats is a traveller whose Australian experience begins and ends on the ground.
What does this mean for ground transport in Australia?
Three things in the strategy translate directly into ground transport demand: business events concentrated midweek and in shoulder season, major event arrival peaks in known cities on confirmed dates, and a national luxury standard that will apply to the transfer as well as the accommodation. Tourism Australia’s own reasoning is that tourism’s value endures beyond the visit, with travellers returning as repeat visitors, advocates, students and investors.
The journey from arrival to departure shapes how a destination is experienced, and every moment of it should be worthy of the rest.
Why choose Marquee Limousines for inbound and business events transfers?
Marquee Limousines provides chauffeured transfers for inbound leisure and business events travel across Australia, working with tour operators, event organisers and corporate clients on arrivals, departures and multi-vehicle movements. As members of the Australian Tourism Export Council, we are part of this conversation and look forward to the decade ahead.
Our fleet ranges from executive sedans to larger vehicles for group and delegation transport, and our airport meet and greet service covers the arrival moment described above.
To discuss transfers for an inbound program, an event, or a business events delegation, contact our team or call 1300 846 008.
Source: Tourism Australia, Tourism 2035, August 2026, with economic modelling by L.E.K. Consulting, December 2025, and per-night expenditure comparisons from Tourism Research Australia’s International Visitor Survey. The full strategy is available from Tourism Australia.
