30 hotels from Australia’s Gold Coast attended a special GTA workshop last week to learn more about how to grow business from the fast growing Asia source market. It follows an 11% increase in the number of room nights booked by Asian travellers in Gold Coast properties last year. In particular the number of room nights booked by the Chinese has more than doubled (+149%).

Andrew Hughes, GTA’s Vice President for Hotel Sourcing Asia-Pacific, hosted the workshop and said: “Our latest industry workshop for the Gold Coast has been really successful. It has given our hotel partners additional market intelligence about North Asia and Japan, and showed how they can actively engage with GTA’s marketing activities to bring more guests to their doors. Working collaboratively with our partners and investing in such events helps them win more business, so we hope to do more in the future.”

The workshop provided an opportunity for hoteliers to hear – direct from the source – insider knowledge and insights about fully independent Asian travellers (FIT) and what appeals to them about Australia. It coincided with a visit by two of GTA’s senior sales leaders from Asia: Daniel Yang, Head of Sales for North Asia (including China) and Tatsuo Masumoto, Head of Sales for Japan. Both gave presentations and answered hoteliers’ questions to help them better understand how to welcome more Asian visitors.

“Being part of events like these puts into perspective how global GTA is and how important our partnerships are. It was fantastic to see the strong relationships with GTA Market Managers and our hotel partners,” adds Daniel Yang.