Ben Southall, hired in a global job hunt last year to take what was billed as the "world's best job" - caretaker of an exotic island locale - is pushing Australian tourism in the capital.

The 35-year-old Briton will conclude a three-day promotional tour in Beijing on Monday. The visit was expected to help tap China's growing overseas tourism market, according to his employer.

Surrounded by more than 20 Chinese journalists and photographers, Southall, wearing a blue T-shirt emblazoned with "the best job in the world", smiled broadly and spoke quickly during a press conference Saturday in a courtyard-style club in the Xicheng district.

"It was my first morning and first time in Beijing," Southall said. "I arrived at 9 o'clock last evening, so I didn't have much chance to know more about the city."

However, Southall said after spending 10 minutes looking outside his hotel window, he was entranced by the scene.

"There were lots of modern buildings mixed with ancient Chinese construction", he said.

He added that he knew a little about what to expect from his 22-year-old girlfriend, who visited Beijing with her family a couple of years ago.

Flying in from Hong Kong, Southall made Beijing his second stop in China. Appearances in Shanghai, Taipei, Guangzhou and Shenzhen will follow in a two-week marketing tour.

He said he would relish his opportunity as the only member of his promotional team to get a sneak preview of the Australia Pavilion before the launch of the Shanghai 2010 Expo.

Southall said he enjoyed every day as caretaker of Hamilton Island in Australia's Queensland. He said he never grew "tired" of the six-month job, which ended last year.

"All my jobs were to enjoy sunshine, feed turtles, diving, jump into the swimming pool and collecting notes on my blog," he said.

However, there might be no such a thing as free lunch.

"We expect the 'best job' campaign will contribute to a 10 to 30 percent rise of Chinese tourists visiting Queensland through 2012, and almost a 100 percent increase in the next five years," said Andrew Parle, China regional director of Tourism Queensland.

Parle revealed Beijing tourists accounted for about 25 percent of the 152,000 Chinese visitors to the state last year.

"So, nearly 40,000 Beijing residents visited Queensland last year and we hope we will be attracting more since Ben made his promotional tour this time," said Parle.

He added Southall and the best-job campaign had yielded more than 400 million Australian dollars (or about 2.54 billion yuan) in global publicity value for Queensland while the competition that elected Southall only cost 1.8 million Australian dollars.

"It's hard to quantify the exact figure of publicity value in Beijing but China is such a very important and major international market for us," he said.

Southall, who beat 35,000 competitors from around the world to win the job living in a luxury villa on Hamilton Island to promote tourism, will continue his role as a publicity machine for the region.

Since his island caretaker contract ended Dec 31 last year, he has been appointed "Best Job in the World Queensland Tourism Ambassador" for the next 18 months, a job that will involve him traveling the world to extol the wonders of Queensland.

During his time on the island, Southall had visited 90 spots in the state, undertaken more than 250 international interviews and published 60 blogs of more than 75,000 words.