C’mon, Aussies, c’mon

New challenge for tourism sector is to hold on to domestic holiday-makers

l CAIRNS CBD

| Nick Dalton

THE greatest challenge for the Far North’s tourism industry was retaining the multibillion-dollar domestic visitor market as more Australians chose to holiday overseas, a business lunch in Cairns was told this week.

Conus Business Consultancy Services director Pete Faulkner, who delivered his annual economic outlook for the Cairns Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, said domestic tourism had been “phenomenally strong” without international tourist numbers.

He said tourism expenditure was “smashing records” with domestic numbers at $4.4 billion while international was $500 million, compared to $2.5bn and $1bn pre-COVID.

“Tourism has been the stand-out performance over the last few years, particularly domestic tourism, but the challenge as Australians travel overseas is: can we hang on?,” Mr Faulkner told 160 movers and shakers.

“The hope is that as international improves it will pick up some of the slack in the slight downturn in domestic.”

Mr Faulkner said domestic numbers were dominated by the drive market rather than by air travel which was back to about 90 per cent while international numbers through the airport were now about 70 per cent.

“Before we know it, we’ll be back to 100 per cent,” he said.

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