Foreign visitors down
Domestic tourists make up numbers
PETER CARRUTHERS peter.carruthers@news.com.au
THE Far Northern tourism lobby is concerned by a decline in international visitors arriving at Cairns Airport but have downplayed the significance of data in the wake of improving domestic arrivals late last year.
December international passenger data reveals a fall of 10.5 per cent (6401), more than -0.2 per cent for the past 12 months (1076).
However, domestic passenger arrivals in December bucked the rolling 12-month average (-4.2 per cent) to ease to -2.5 per cent.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive officer Mark Olsen said domestic passengers had clawed back the decrease.
“The economic conditions in Australia in 2020 are for relatively slow growth. That always leads to a stronger domestic market,” he said.
“We have seen through September and we have seen in December the key take-out is that the domestic market in particular are looking for more cost effective options and they are increasing their average length of stay.”
He said losing international arrivals into Cairns impacted many businesses.
Cairns Airport chief commercial aviation officer Luis Perez said a 180,563 decline in domestic passengers during the last year could be partly attributed to wet weather in early in 2019.
“There was lots of rain and flooding and that could have caused people to change their plans and cancel coming to Cairns,” he said.
“We would like to see obviously those numbers positive but there are things that happen that are out of our control.”