Australians be warned - there could be an influx of American tourists thanks to a new Qantas campaign offering US travellers a "free passport" to travel to Australia.
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The airline is offering American travellers a $US135 ($173) discount (or the cost of a US passport) off the price of their next ticket to Australia flying with the airline. It's estimated that only 40 per cent of Americans hold a valid passport.
The campaign is aimed at bringing more US travellers to Australia and position Australia as the next international holiday destination for Americans.
Australia welcomed more than eight million international visitors in the year ending June 2017; 753,000 of whom were from the US. Total international visitor spend was $40.6 billion of which US travellers spent $3.7 billion - a 7 per cent rise on the previous year.
"Australia is in the top five destinations Americans would consider travelling to in the next four years, yet more than half the population do not hold a valid passport," Qantas chief customer officer Olivia Wirth said in a statement.
"As Australia's national carrier, we are proud and excited to share all that Australia has to offer - and with this campaign we are keen to help boost tourism to our cities, towns and regional areas at the same time."
For Australians, the US remains one of the top destinations. Australians are bucking the 'Trump slump', a term that has been coined to sum up the decline in overall tourism in the US since President Donald Trump put in place tighter border rules. The election of Trump has not affected the choice of Australians travelling to the states according to ABS figures which indicate small growth of Australian travellers to the US.
The campaign coincides with the arrival of Qantas's new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. From December 2017, Qantas will add a new Dreamliner service from Los Angeles to Melbourne. The airline currently operates Airbus A380s and Boeing 747 jumbo jets between the US and Australia.
Qantas offers non-stop flights from Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Dallas/Fort Worth and Vancouver, to Australia.
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