Prince William and his bride-to-be, Kate Middleton, may make Australia the destination for their royal honeymoon, a prospect that has tourism officials down under ready to fire up their barbies, according to The Telegraph.
“I love scuba diving. I have always wanted to dive the [Great] Barrier Reef,” said Prince William to the international press as he promised to boost business and tourism in disaster-prone areas of Australia.
“I will have to come back â maybe we’ll have a honeymoon in Cairns.” said the Prince according to The Telegraph.
The prince’s decision could be an economic boom for the tourism industry in the areas still recovering from cyclone Yasi.
“The media follows William and the world looks to celebrity and when those people come it gets broadcast across the world,” Andrew McEvoy, managing director of Tourism Australia, told ABCNews.com.
In the fall of 2010, the queen of gab, Oprah Winfrey, announced on the first episode of the final season that she was taking her 300-person audience on a trip to the land down under. The trip for “The Oprah Winfrey” show audience and crew was a part of the Tourism Australia’s branded-content strategy, which resulted in a four-hour lovefest that aired earlier this year.
The group was flown to Australia aboard a plane manned by two-time Oscar nominee John Travolta for multi-day vacation that included stops in Melbourne, Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef. The multi-million dollar visit sponsored by Tourism Australia was a part of the bid to lure more Americans as U.S. travel to the area began to taper off .
There were 5.9 million visitors to Australia during the year ending Jan. 31, 2011, which is an increase of 5.8 percent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Originally Published On: abcnews.go.com – Original Article Here