Spread the love

Post Views: 132

The travel industry social highlight this week was undoubtedly the gala farewell at Sydney Opera House for one of the travel industry’s best-known faces and personalities: Astrid Gruchmann-Licht, Director for Australia at the Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO) Sydney.

Gruchmann-Licht, who is heading back to Austria after 32 years at the helm, has built a reputation over three decades in Australia as one of the most capable and proactive NTO directors in the country.

Musicians from Sydney Symphony Orchestra performed at Tuesday night’s event.

“In my heart, there’s no better place for tonight,” Gruchmann-Licht said, thanking the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for the celebration.

She went on to tell her audience of the coming restructure of ANTO, which will see Australia wrapped into the Asia Pacific region from this January.

The restructure had provided a “golden moment”, in which she had decided not to take up the offer to continue working for ANTO as head of marketing Europe, “as tempting as this could be”, but to make Salzburg her primary home.

“Some of you know that this is where I grew up,” Gruchmann-Licht said of Salzburg. “And where I have married my childhood sweetheart, just before the pandemic.”

That, Gruchmann-Licht revealed, was the “personal reasons” behind her move.

“My ‘personal reasons’ is love, really,” she said, to much applause from her many friends in the audience.

Astrid Gruchmann-Licht

The farewell celebration was also an opportunity to introduce Kathrina Denk, ANTO’s Market Representative in Australia.

Denk, already well known to agents and to Australian travel media, will share offices in Sydney’s CBD with the Austrian Trade Commission and Austrian Consul General, Karl Hartleb.

ANTO Director of Markets Heidi Tscharf presented Gruchmann-Licht with an Austrian Government high honour, commemorating Gruchmann-Licht’s service to Austria and to tourism during a stellar career which dates from 1991 when Astrid Licht (as she then was) arrived to set up the Australian ANTO office.

Tourism between Austria and Australia has shot up in the intervening years and Gruchmann-Licht is now a dual citizen of both countries. Her love for both was evident at the event on Tuesday.

Photo at top shows (left to right): Rory Jeffes (former chief executive of Opera Australia and former managing director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra); Kathrina Denk, Austria’s Market Representative in Australia; Astrid Gruchmann-Licht; Heidi Tscharf, ANTO Director of Markets; and Karl Hartleb, Consul-General of Austria. Photo © 2022. New Point of View/Reza Bagheri