Prestige tourism office on the move

A CAIRNS tourism office has settled into their new digs after leaving its previous location of more than 12 years.

Cairns Business and Leisure Travel has moved out of its previous tenancy on the corner of Smith and Sheridan streets at Cairns North into a new office on the same block at 349 Sheridan Street.

Managing director Martin Keating said the move was made due to issues with the managing agent.

“We had planned to move in November last year and leave when the lease was up,” Mr Keating said.

“There had been maintenance issues.

“We ended up moving in March after our lease was up at the end of February — we stayed an extra month to work on the move.”

The decision to move in March coincided with the beginning of a turbulent time in the industry thanks to COVID.

Mr Keating said it had unintentionally worked out for them, since the downturn in activity had given them time to focus on the move.

“There were a lot of frustrations to deal with — it took Telstra eight weeks to sort out our NBN connection,” he said.

“Other than that, the works we have done here have been good, handled by a great team of tradesmen.”

With the move complete, Cairns BLT has since focused on returning to normal business as restrictions ease.

“We have clients up and down the Cape that are restricted by the lack of service,” Mr Keating said.

“They’re kind of getting back to normal … we’ve got some good clients in PNG that can’t travel, and some Cairnsbased clients that can’t go anywhere other than within Queensland.

“I do think that Cairns is doing it tough with everything going on, not just our globally affected industry, but retail travel in general.

“Most of our agents have been processing refunds with no sales coming through.”