Significant weather events in the North around Cairns, Port Douglas and Daintree and in the South around the Gold Coast and Mount Tamborine that started days before Christmas has meant TEQ and the Department of Tourism has been busy through the holiday period working with Tourism Tropical North Queensland (TTNQ), Experience Gold Coast (EGC) and Brisbane Economic Development Agency (BEDA) to assess impacts and provide the required support where we could.
Our new Minister, Michael Healy, was with us on the Gold Coast meeting with operators to hear the impacts first-hand before we headed up North to Cairns, Port Douglas and Cape Tribulation to do the same. I want to thank CEO’s Mark Olsen from TTNQ, John Warn from EGC and Glen Hingley from Port Douglas and the Daintree and all their teams for working with us to pull these meetings together so quickly. We know timing is everything in a disaster and it was important we were on the ground as soon as possible to ensure what we were to deliver would hit the right areas of pain.
And the pain across the industry has been stark.
TTNQ is estimating losses in bookings to the Northern region to be in the vicinity of $300 million and climbing and forwards to February and March in occupancy is as low as 20 per cent across the board. In the South, our experiences whether it be theme parks, museums or wildlife sanctuaries have lost their best days of the year.
So, we have started rolling out the support!
The Queensland and Federal Governments have committed multimillion dollar packages of marketing support which is being delivered by TEQ.
An initial $5 million in recovery funding was announced for Cairns and surrounding regions to attract visitors back to the region, jointly funded through the Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA).
As part of this funding, TEQ has been working closely with Qantas and Jetstar to promote sale fares to the region, with one-way economy domestic sale fares to Cairns starting from $129 and $79 respectively. The sales included flights to and from most capital cities and intrastate routes for travel from mid-January to the end of March 2024. The airlines are already reporting more than 13,000 seats sold off the back of this sale which is amazing news for the region and a fantastic outcome! A partnership with Virgin Australia will also be launched in the coming weeks, with more discounted flights on offer to travellers!
Discounted accommodation packages will also be available in coming weeks through Qantas Hotels & Holidays, My Queensland and Luxury Escapes, and negotiations are also ongoing with other aviation and travel industry partners.
A further $3 million for a tourism and events marketing campaign was announced by the Premier and Prime Minister to attract more visitors back to the region, and details on this campaign will be released in the coming weeks.
For the Gold Coast, Logan and Scenic Rim regions the Prime Minister and Premier also announced clean-up and recovery packages this week.
Whilst we agree we are currently seeing accommodation and flights holding strong on the Coast, we acknowledge that there are a number of operators who are feeling the impact and EGC has provided intel this week that has assisted the development of a targeted package of support that is currently being designed and will be released as soon as possible.
We are also using our media and PR channels to ensure that we are spreading the message far and wide that Queensland is OPEN for business.
There is a range of activity underway in the North, with national TV coverage across the summer of cricket, full page adverts in major publications in capital cities, morning show weather crosses, media famils and pitching ‘open for business’ stories to our global media partners.
On the Gold Coast, we have leveraged our Magic Millions partnership to support the region with a Gold Coast Bulletin event wrap, live crosses with major broadcast partners, and using our PR channels to leverage the sport and media personalities in town to expand exposure. I’d also like to give a huge shout out to Katie Page-Harvey and Gerry Harvey and their teams for providing support across their channels and being strong ambassadors of the message that the Gold Coast is open for business!
While it has been a challenging start to 2024, I am still optimistic about the year ahead.
Our Queensland industry is resilient, and we are still seeing strong appetite from travellers to get back to our beautiful regions despite the recent weather events.
TEQ, along with our Government and industry partners are committed to supporting our industry through these tough times and we look forward to seeing the State shine brighter than ever before as we come out the other side of this recovery period!
* Trish, CEO, Tourism and Events Queensland
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