Australian budget carrier Jetstar will return to China with direct Boeing 787 flights from Melbourne to the Central Chinese city of Zhengzhou.
The twice-weekly flights start in December and are expected to bring an additional 35,000 Chinese tourists to Australia annually.
While it serves 20 destinations in China with 68 flights a week operated by its Jetstar-branded partners in Asia, Jetstar has been slow to take on Chinese carriers with direct flights from Australia.
It previously operated a twice weekly charter service from the Gold Coast to the mainland city of Wuhan in partnership with developer Wanda. This ended in 2016 when the Chinese company pulled out.
Zhengzhou, a city of about 10 million people, is the capital of Henan Province and its choice as a destination is consistent with Jetstar's strategy of targeting secondary cities in China.
The former ancient capital serves as major transportation hub for central China as well as the political, economic, technological, and educational centre for the province.
Jetstar chief executive Jayne Hrdlicka said the growing middle class in China presented enormous opportunities for Australian tourism.
“We expect our low-fares will further stimulate inbound tourism from China to Australia,’’ Hrdlicka said in a statement.
“China already accounts for the largest source of tourism in Victoria, and by 2020 it’s predicted that China will overtake New Zealand to be Australia’s largest tourism market.
“We know that Chinese travellers generally visit two or three cities when they visit Australia so we expect this will boost tourism to other parts of Australia.”
Partnering the airline is travel specialist China Comfort Travel, which will sell flights and holiday packages directly to Chinese travellers.
Australia signed an open skies agreement with China at the end of 2016 and Australian transport Minister Darren Chester said the new service would stimulate growth and give people travelling between the two countries more choice.
About one in seven people visiting Australia is now Chinese and the country is the second biggest source of visitor arrivals after New Zealand.
Expenditure by Chinese travellers in Victoria increased by 12.7 per cent last year to $A2.6 billion and accounted for more than a third of all tourism expenditure in the state.
The number of passengers carried between Australia and China on direct air services also rose by 24 per cent to 2.7 million.
Fares from Melbourne to Zhengzhou start from $A566 one-way.
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