US flights welcomed
The announcement that Qantas will begin direct flights to Brisbane from Chicago and San Francisco early next year offers great opportunities for our destination to grow the North American market.
Qantas has added 11 additional return flights between Brisbane and Cairns providing excellent connectivity to the US.
North America is the Cairns and Great Barrier Reef region’s third largest international market with a record 142,000 visitors increasing by 9.7% in the year ending March 2019.
The US figures grew by 7.5% to 116,000 while the number of Canadian visitors was up 20.6% to 26,000.
We have even greater potential to grow these figures with the new direct Qantas flights to Brisbane from Chicago and San Francisco.
TTNQ has done extensive work in this market this year which included joining Tourism and Events Queensland Los Angeles on a distribution development mission throughout North America.
Meetings and presentations were held with 35 travel business owners, general managers and product managers to highlight destination and new product developments, as well as providing destination updates to 32 selected media in New York.
TTNQ was also invited to attend the first Signature Travel Network Advisors Australia workshop in Los Angeles led by Tourism Australia which gave destination presentations to more than 40 travel network advisors.
The team is in the process of finalising in-market sales training missions to North America to provide members the opportunity to update, evaluate and explore their potential in the North American market by meeting with leading wholesale and tour operator businesses in the US.
The first trip is set for September with a potential second trip running straight after due to high expressions of interest, and the third trip is planned for March 2020.
Products from the Cairns and Great Barrier Reef region are also showing strong support for the Australia Marketplace event in Los Angeles and Queensland on Tour North America in August.
[Article from 19 June 2019 “TTNQ Fortnightly Pulse”]
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