
Episode #34
Tourism Australia has a $13.5 billion dollar vulnerability it doesn't want to admit
Tourism Australia has a $13.5 billion vulnerability hiding in plain sight. Its new Tourism 2035 strategy talks about growing visitor spending, encouraging longer stays and extracting more value from tourism. But international education barely gets a look in. That’s remarkable when education-related visitors generated $15.3 billion in tourism expenditure, compared with $13.5 billion from holiday visitors. In this episode of Global Horizons, Dirk Mulder and I dig into what that omission says about the way Australia thinks about international education, tourism and migration. We also get into: • The state of Learning Abroad after this year’s national forum • Whether Australia should rediscover the humble study tour • What the latest Navitas Agent Perception Survey tells us about changing student behaviour • Why AI might actually make good education agents more important • The international education conference season ahead And, naturally, Dirk tells us about the time he unexpectedly found himself standing in front of up to 2,000 students in India with absolutely nothing prepared. Just another quiet week in international education. Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Gelo Ablao. Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website. This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia’s unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets. Global Horizons is the official podcast of the Australian International Education Conference. Registrations are open now: https://aiec.idp.com






