As the Australian and Indian cricket teams meet each other in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Tourism Australia is pursuing its own stake in the series: leveraging cricket’s popularity to attract the lucrative Indian tourism market, with the potential to foster cross-cultural understanding and strengthen bilateral economic ties.

Picture yourself enjoying an exciting cricket match between bat and ball on the first day of a test match, then heading off to the Great Barrier Reef for some snorkelling. You could also soak in the beautiful sounds of a live didgeridoo performance from an ancient limestone cave, or take a drive along the stunning Great Ocean Road, all before diving back into the game on the thrilling Day four! This is what Tourism Australia is pitching to Indian tourists—a heady mix of exciting cricket and unique experiences like sand boarding, sunset kayaking, snorkelling, vineyard tours, dolphin watching, stargazing, Michelin-star dining, and scenic drives—ahead of the prestigious Border-Gavaskar Trophy (BGT) 2024-25 to encourage Indian cricket enthusiasts to secure tickets, gather their belongings, and travel to Australia.

It has roped in David Warner, former Australian cricketer who is highly popular in India, to showcase some of his favourite Australian holiday destinations and experiences in Sydney, Melbourne, and the Gold Coast in a flurry of Instagram posts. The campaign represents a strategic move to leverage the profile of a recognised cricketing icon. With a present value of AUD$2.2 billion to Australian tourism, India is Australia’s fastest-growing tourism market. The BGT offers Canberra a fantastic chance to really profit from this market.

India is among the fastest-growing economies globally, and with a population over 1.4 billion, the nation will significantly influence global tourism in the coming decades. According to a report to the Australian Government in 2018, Australia is expected to attract more than 1 million Indian tourists every year from 2035. This positions India to ascend from being Australia’s eighth largest tourism market to the fourth largest. By 2035, around 70 million Indians are projected to travel abroad yearly, indicating that Indian tourism might contribute over AUD$9 billion annually to the Australian economy.

Cricket has become a significant tool for promoting Australia as a diverse amalgamation of Aboriginal culture, wildlife encounters, landscapes, and adventure sports to attract the Indian market. In 2020, Australia’s former tourism minister, Simon Birmingham, proposed a funding increase of $1 million for Tourism Australia to enhance its marketing initiatives aimed at attracting more Indian tourists to the 2022 ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup. Phillipa Harrison, Managing Director of tourism Australia, has recently visited India with a team of 15 CEOs from the Australian tourist sector to engage with senior officials from the Indian tourism industry and reinforce relationships with key partners in New Delhi and Mumbai. Between 11-14 November, the Australian CEO delegation met Thomas Cook (India), among other partners, which has joined hands with Cricket Australia as one of two licensed travel operators (other being SOTC Travel) for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-25. Both Thomas Cook (India) and SOTC Travel are offering exclusive travel packages centred around the five Test matches, which include “vineyard tours, private yachting, helicopter tours, and self-drive adventures.”

Regional governments are not far behind in leveraging cricket to woo Indian tourists either. Western Australia (WA) is particularly invested in exploiting the popularity of cricket to highlight to fans across India what the state has to offer as a holiday destination. In August 2024, Western Australia’s Tourism Minister Rita Saffioti announced plans to bid for the hosting of an Indian Premier League (IPL) match at Perth’s Optus Stadium. The IPL is the most popular and biggest cricket league in the world, held annually in India. The initiative to leverage the profile of an Indian cricket league is part of a broader strategy to elevate WA’s standing as a premier tourist destination. Another initiative as part of this strategy was to rope in Australian cricket legend Adam Gilchrist in Tourism Western Australia’s latest campaign to attract Indian visitors to Western Australia. Titled, “Drive The Dream,” the campaign encourages people from India to check out day trips in and around Perth, WA’s capital. The campaign began in Mumbai and Delhi on 19 August 2024, and shows Gilchrist and his son going on an array of adventures, such as “four-wheel driving and sand-boarding in Lancelin, stargazing at the Pinnacles, wine tasting in the Swan Valley, dolphin cruising in Rockingham, and experiencing the Vertigo walk at Optus Stadium.” Ahead of the BGT game, the advertisement seeks to build on the excitement for cricket by using Gilchrist’s legendary reputation to draw attention from Indian viewers.

Regardless of the outreach through cricket, the commitment of Western Australia’s Perth, and other regional cities like Brisbane and Adelaide, to the Indian market remains limited due to the lack direct flights from these towns to India. More direct flights between Australia and India are critical to strengthening the tourism and larger economic relationship, as emphasised in the 2018 “An India Economic Strategy to 2035” report to the Australian government. On the bright side, there are 26 flights per week between Australia and India, a significant increase from the 8 flights per week in 2019. All of this is good news for the overall health of Indo-Australian bilateral relations. Beyond numbers, favourable tourism outcomes have the potential to foster cultural literacy and promote direct interpersonal connections which can surcharge broader bilateral economic relationships by leaps and bounds. The BGT will only add to the “whole new trajectory of transformational growth” of India-Australia relationship.

Anubhav Shankar Goswami is a Doctoral Student of Politics and International Relations at the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science, Murdoch University, Perth. His doctoral research is based in the field of nuclear strategy with a particular focus on nuclear brinkmanship. Anubhav tweets at Anubhav Shankar (@Shankar5Anubhav).

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