Australia welcomed 6.7 million visitors in the 12 month period ending August 2014, an increase of 8.2 per cent when compared to the same period the previous year.

Of the total, 666,900 visitors arrived from the UK representing a 5.7 per cent increase on the previous 12 months.

The UK remains Australia’s most valuable leisure market in terms of total spend with leisure visitors from the UK contributing 15 per cent of the total spend for all inbound leisure visitors to Australia - AUD$2.6 billion a year.

The UK also remains the most valuable international leisure market for Australia in terms of visitor nights and dispersed nights.

Denise von Wald, Tourism Australia’s regional general manager UK/Northern Europe, said: “At Tourism Australia, we are working with industry partners around the world to deliver our Tourism 2020 Strategy which aims to achieve AUD$115-$140 billion in overnight expenditure by the year 2020, up from $70 billion in 2009.

“As part of this plan we have a huge focus on attracting UK visitors, who spend a lot and travel widely in Australia.

“We use our marketing resources to show ‘why there’s nothing like Australia’ promoting our friendly locals, our wonderful wildlife, our laidback coastal lifestyle and our award winning food and wine experiences, creating points of difference with competitor destinations.”

Tourism Australia’s global focus on better telling the story of Australia’s food and wine experiences under the campaign headline ‘Restaurant Australia’ is proving successful in the UK market.

Activity has included a media partnership with the Mail on Sunday linked to a pop up restaurant open for paying customers in Australia House for a week; and a ten part Advertiser Funded Programme series called ‘John Torode’s Australia’, which has been airing on Good Food and is showing on Watch in November.

TA has also developed a new TV series with Channel 4 due to air in 2015, and rolled out a series of Restaurant Australia themed travel agent training events to help frontline staff convert consumer interest in to bookings for Australia.