Media reports say that after a visit to Sydney by talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, more Americans are checking out Sydney.

In March, Ellen and Portia Portia de Rossia, ‘her Australian wife’, made a five day trip to the land down under. In fact, Portia is from Melbourne. Ellen was in Sydney shooting segments of her show in front of a 3000-member Aussie crowd.

"I've wanted to come to Australia for a long, long time, before meeting Portia," said Ellen in a report by TVNZ. In fact, the accomplished talk show personality said that she would like to retire in Australia after living in Los Angeles to do her show.

The TV superstar, has a penache for convincing guests and audiences on the show. With photos of Ellen and Portia, who is from Australia, on her facebook page, it’s predictable that her audience would follow suit in flying to Australia.

She can really work the American public, especially women who feel empowered by many of the themes on the show. She even got President Barack Obama to do his version of the ‘Psy’s” Gangman style dance on her show.

In terms of statistics, inbound ticket sales from the U.S to Sydney have gone up by a whopping 22 percent, said NSW’s Tourism Minister George Souris.

A visit by Ellen and her buddies led to a joint marketing campaign, titled ‘Dance Your Way Down Under by NSW and Qantas.

Souris said in a statement, "The campaign, which includes television commercials in Los Angeles and New York during screening of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, has delivered immediate results for NSW and is a great return on investment in promoting our state to North American audiences."
The Dance Your Way Down Under campaign played from April to June in the U.S. and went online featuring eatured online marketing in the US.

Souris told News.com, “there were 62 million impressions on Qantas websites and 220,000 leads for business leads and services throughout NSW.
CEO, Qantas International, described Ellen's visit has brought Australia to centre stage in the mind’s of travellers.

"The exposure we have for Australia in the important US market has been outstanding," Souris said.

After her trip to Australia, Ellen wrote on Twitter, "I had heard Aussies were incredible people, but this week I experienced it for myself. Thank you, Australia. I'm glad I married one of you," Bang Showbiz reports.