More Aussies visiting
Direct Chinese flights free up domestic airline seats for interstate travellers
DIRECT flights from China have freed up some domestic seats to allow more Australians to fly to Cairns.
China Southern and Hainan airlines have been operating regular services from Guangzhou and Shenzhen since late last year.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Pip Close said about 75 per cent of international visitors travelled to the Far North on domestic routes.
“Direct services from China starting in December 2017 may have increased the availability of seats for domestic passengers, allowing Australian visitor numbers to increase to 1.9 million,” she said.
Ms Close said the 11.6 per cent rise in spending by Australian travellers in Cairns to $2.1 billion or an average $230 a night was in keeping with TTNQ’s strategy of attracting cashed-up visitors.
“Intrastate visitors continue to be strong with an 8.3 per cent increase to 1.2 million and it was good to see growth in the interstate market after a decline in 2017,” she said.
“Melbourne continued to deliver strong growth with a 25.4 per cent increase to 171,000 and Brisbane was up by 14 per cent to 260,000.
“The decline in visitors from Sydney has slowed with just a 3 per cent fall to 164,000 for the year ending March 2018.
“TTNQ has been doing research in the Sydney market to determine what the factors are preventing travel to Tropical North Queensland so we can develop a strategy to reverse this trend.
“Visitors from Townsville grew by 6.5 per cent to 194,000 and visitors from within Tropical North Queensland grew 12.3 per cent to 630,000.”
In the meantime the latest Cairns Airport statistics show a slight increase in passenger numbers by 1 per cent to 389,380 last month compared to May, 2017.
Domestic numbers were up by 2 per cent to 321,060 but international travellers were down overall by 1 per cent to 46,010.
An airport report said there were fewer transit passengers (down 16 per cent) because of the drop in through-flights such as the cancelled Philippine Airlines’ Manila-CairnsAuckland service.