Asian tourism market seen as vital to Australia

An Australian state government is going all out to maximise the potential of what it sees as its greatest inbound tourism market.

The Victorian government says attracting more visitors from Asia is the key to its 10-year tourism strategy.

The state expects tourism to become an $18 billion industry by 2016, an increase of more than $7 billion on the current figure.

Tourism Minister John Pandazopoulos says the expected growth will create 66,000 new jobs.

He says many of those jobs will require extra training to meet the needs of the Asian market.

"We are responding to that market well now, but in fact in the next few years it would triple or quadruple in size and that'll put a lot of pressure on us to deliver the service that they need according to their cultural needs," he said.

Mr Pandazopoulos says attracting more visitors from Asia is the major priority.

"We already have the reputation as a state of being a place of events, the leading city for culture, the leading city for dining and night-life and romance and we believe that we can build on this reputation that we have at the moment to deliver that to maybe newer markets like China and India, but also create a bigger tourism economy," he said.

- RADIO AUSTRALIA