With travel restrictions lifting, except from Victoria, TTNQ is ramping up its domestic marketing activities in Queensland and interstate. We are working in close cooperation with the airlines, Tourism and Events Queensland and our retail partners to align our marketing efforts.
Boosting our efforts over the next 12 months, TTNQ welcomes the recently announced commitment from Cairns Regional Council in its 2020-2021 budget to fund the domestic marketing of Cairns & Great Barrier Reef with a $2.9 million budget. This increases the Council’s base investment with a welcome $500,000 boost to aviation and events to match the investment of the Cairns Airport.
This is a strong commitment to helping the region’s tourism industry recover in a very challenging marketplace.
The domestic campaign builds on the strong regional results in the March quarter National Visitor Survey data which showed a record domestic performance with $2.6 million expenditure in our region during the year ending March 2020, an increase in visitor spend of 13.2%.
For the year ending March 2020, domestic visitor numbers were up 8.1% to 2.2 million with holiday visitors increasing by 17% to 1.2 million.
New South Wales was a record result with a 24.7% increase to 332,000, boding well for the opening of our borders with that state on Friday.
Victoria performed well with a 7.3% increase to 318,000, but Melbourne was down by 8.6% to 211,000. The region will increase its focus in Melbourne for immediate travel bookings for travel later in the year.
There was strong growth from Townsville with a 38.1% increase to 264,000 and 7.8% growth from Brisbane to 272,000.
The region has taken its first step to recovery with intrastate travel bringing visitors during the school holidays and we are looking forward to the first interstate flight arriving on Friday from Sydney.
Next week TTNQ will join other business leaders in Brisbane for meetings with key Ministers to ensure your voice is being heard on extending JobKeeper and the Queensland Government business support stimulus, seeking more funds to support the region’s aviation capacity and pushing the infrastructure projects that will transform the economy for the new future we face.
Operators in Cairns & Great Barrier Reef need to ensure they are leading the State in providing COVID-Safe experiences and if you haven’t already done so please update your ATDW listing to show you are COVID-Safe so that you can be included in the TEQ Good to Go campaign. We still have a long road to recovery, but the green shoots are boosting confidence and the knowledge that we have our industry and partner support will help make the path smoother.
If there is anything TTNQ can do to assist your business with its recovery or issues we need to lobby for please don’t hesitate to reach out to me on [email protected].
Cheers
Mark Olsen
Chief Executive Officer
8 July 2020