Shot in arm

Today’s tourism funding announcement is a welcome and much-needed step

The Gold Coast tourism sector has endured a difficult five years. The last time we enjoyed a summer unencumbered by disaster, natural or otherwise, was 2018-19.

In the half-decade since then, it’s been one write-off after another, including bushfires (2019-20), Covid (2020-21, 2021-22), a devastating helicopter crash (2022-23) and now the Christmas night storm.

The deadly event killed a Helensvale woman, left thousands of homes without power and hundreds badly damaged, causing a repair bill expected to be in the billions.

The city’s theme parks, Sea World aside, were forced to close with Top Golf still shut indefinitely after the devastating damage to its infrastructure.

But perhaps worse than the physical damage endured by our tourism operators as a result of the storm and its aftermath is a crisis of confidence and hesitancy from tourists.

Not those who have already come to the Coast but those who either booked in advance or perhaps were considering travelling here in January, only to become wary as a result of the storms and poor weather.

While perhaps understandable, it is bad news for the tens of thousands of families who rely upon tourism for their income.

The state government’s move to address this is not only welcome but a critically important intervention.

Teaming up with Experience Gold Coast and Tourism and Events Queensland (TEQ), the GC Summer FUNds initiative will inject $2.5m into the economy, and will allow both tourists and locals to be given access to more than 50,000 vouchers to use on experiences including theme parks.

EGC CEO John Warn summed up succinctly why the industry needed support.

“Our industry demonstrates its resilience time and again but during this peak tourism season it needs our support more than ever as many operators begin the task of rebuilding,” he said.

It has been a tough half-decade for the Gold Coast tourism sector and let’s hope this funding will help our operators claw back to where they should have been.