Australian brand drops below NZ – study

NEW Zealand is a stronger country brand than Australia, an international survey shows.

FutureBrand’s country brand index, which is run in association with BBC World News, assessed 113 countries.

The latest annual index released at the World Travel Market in London on Thursday (UK time) rated Canada the overall strongest brand, with Australia dropping three spots to number five behind New Zealand, which was ranked at number three.

Switzerland and Japan filled out the other top five ranking.

New Zealand topped the list in terms of perception of natural beauty, but was downgraded in the “good for business” rating.

FutureBrand said this was “perhaps correlating to increasingly high housing prices, rising household debts and the after-effects of a devastating earthquake in February 2011”.

Australia rated eighth in terms of quality of life and 10th in terms of “country value systems”.

The survey polled 3500 business and leisure travellers from 14 countries.