WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?
REGION IN BATTLE FOR MORE AUSSIE VISITORS
“We are competing with cheap Bali package deals and strong (New Zealand) growth”
THE increasing cost of domestic flights and competition from cheaper destinations such as Bali and Thailand have emerged as possible contributors to a decline in domestic visitors to Cairns.
Tourism Research Australia data to the year ending June 2017 showed domestic overnight numbers to Tropical North Queensland dropped four per cent to 1.8 million visitors and expenditure fell 9.1 per cent to $1.9 billion.
Holiday and business travel declined by 9.6 per cent and 19.1 per cent respectively.
The figures come as Cairns Airport celebrated a milestone one million passengers through the gateway during July and August.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Pip Close said strong demand for seats had made the price of flights to Cairns too expensive for Australians.
She said the greatest loss was from Sydney with a 38.5 per cent fall in holiday visitors.
“Many of the domestic airline seats were filled by international passengers unable to access direct connections to Cairns,” she said.
“We are competing with cheap Bali package deals and strong growth in the number of people travelling to New Zealand.
“There is also a boom in the cruise market which has become more affordable for Australian travellers.”
Advance Queensland chief executive Kevin Byrne agreed.
“This is disappointing news just at a time when we have some serious investment into our hotel sector,” he said.
“At the end of the day we continue to remain a strong tourism destination with overall strong underlying marketing plans in place.”
But Cairns Airport aviation chief commercial officer Paul McLean said there was a 3 per cent increase in seats available on domestic flights for the year ending June 2017.
“The load factors show there was capacity available across the domestic network,” he said.
“It has been the case for many years that around 25-30 per cent of passengers through the domestic terminal are international travellers.
“One-hundred-and-fifty thousand more passengers travelled on domestic flights during the year ending June 2017 than the previous year, 40,000 of these people were international travellers on domestic flights, 37,000 more passengers travelled on international flights operating through T1.”