Domestic visitors fl ock to QLD to compete in paradise

Domestic visitors flock to QLD to compete in paradise

By Mandy Clarke, Editor

Queensland has been crowned the nation’s tourism capital, with TNQ, Whitsundays and Sunshine Coast reaching record levels of visitor expenditure.

A new ‘Domestic Tourism Snapshot’ released by Tourism & Events Queensland (TEQ) showed that the Sunshine State outperformed the national average and all other states for Overnight Visitor Expenditure (OVE) growth. The snapshot revealed holidaymakers continued to lead the way with OVE in March 2022 recorded at 45.2 percent or $896 million higher than in March 2019, the 45.2 percent split evenly among intrastate and interstate holiday visitors. Some of the growth has been attributed to the state’s largest endurance events, including the GC Marathon, Noosa Tri and IRONMAN Cairns which are bringing in droves of interstate competitors to take part, particularly from NSW and Victoria. On top of attending, participants, many of whom are accompanied by their families, have also built-in extra time to stay on and relax on a post-event basis in various locations across the state. Tropical North Queensland, the Whitsundays and the Sunshine Coast in particular, have all been beneficiaries. When compared to 2019, Tropical North Queensland’s OVE was up 18.8 percent, while the Sunshine Coast was up by 5.7 percent and the Whitsundays by 22.9 percent across the three-year trend. The TEQ snapshot shows the increase in expenditure has predominately been led by an increase in spend on accommodation fuelled by a strong increase in average daily rates. A total of 82.1 million domestic overnight trips were taken in Australia in the year ending March 2022, which is down 30.1 percent compared to the pre-COVID-19 benchmark of the year ending December 2019. Overnight visitor expenditure (OVE) was $63.3 billion, which is 21.5 per cent lower than the year ending December 2019. National holiday OVE has returned to pre-COVID-19 levels (up 0.5 percent) at 33.7 billion with Australians continuing to holiday at home when they have been able to. However other travel purposes are still softer including VFR expenditure, down 21.6 percent to $9.9 billion and business OVE, down 46.2 percent.

Meanwhile, international tourists are back

The first solid measure of Australia’s inbound market since borders reopened, the latest International Visitor Survey (IVS) results to the end of March 2022, shows despite the return of international visitors the export tourism industry’s road to recovery still has a long way to go. The figures reveal a 94 percent decline in visitor numbers and an 89 percent drop in spend compared to March 2019, highlighting the significant loss of capacity and income experienced by the export tourism industry. Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) Managing Director, Peter Shelley said it is now critical that the government invests in export marketing support funding to ensure Australia is globally competitive if the country is to see a more positive result in the next IVS issue.

“As 2019 drew to a close, Australia saw over 8.7 million international visitors annually who spent over $45 billion in our economy,” Mr Shelley said. “While there are notionally no barriers to travel, the reality for both traveller and tourism businesses is quite different as a shattered supply system attempts to reconnect and revitalise.”

Mr Shelley said barriers to rebuilding include economy wide issues like staffing, international pressures such as fuel prices and the war in Ukraine as well as Australia’s own bureaucratic systems. “The length of time to process visa applications for intending international visitors has blown out to an extreme where people are either receiving approval at the 11th hour or even after they were due to depart which is having a direct effect on our desirability in the international market. With so many barriers to travel remaining, Australia must urgently remove any impediments which are within its control.”

During the two years of international border closures, many tourism businesses were forced to shift focus to attract domestic visitors and have been slow to return to the inbound market. However, Mr Shelley warned that with Australians once again heading overseas, if the inbound market does not increase, the already significant gap between tourism imports and exports will grow considerably at the expense of the Australian economy. He said: “The recovery of Australia’s $45bn tourism export industry is both a marketing challenge in attracting intending travellers to come to Australia, as well as a tourism product challenge, ensuring we can rebuild out travel offering which has been significantly eroded by the pandemic.”

Images courtesy of This is Queensland