Tourist surge kicks in

GOLD Coast hotels and tourism favourites are booked out in some cases as interstate visitors pour in.

As of Saturday, hotel booking website Booking.com reported 82 to 84 per cent of hotels on the Gold Coast had been booked out each weekend for the next month, while popular cabaret Dracula’s is fully booked for next weekend.

It comes after the Queensland border was reopened at noon on Friday.

Dracula’s had a busy reopening weekend and is sold out for next weekend.

Operations manager Luke Newman said 90 per cent of patrons were from Queensland, with northern NSW and other areas making up the rest.

“We have put a lot of work in to make sure we returned abiding by the COVID-19 safe rules and could keep that Dracula’s experience,” Mr Newman said.

Village Roadshow Theme Parks chief operating officer Bikash Randhawa said he was happy with turnouts at Sea World and Outback Spectacular: “The Sea World Resort has been chock-a-block. Hopefully the momentum gained for tourism over the weekend continues to grow.”

Village’s sister parks Movie World and Wet’n’Wild will reopen on Wednesday.

“Movie World brings a different clientele that will hopefully see more from interstate,” Mr Randhawa said. “When that and Wet’n’Wild open we will have the full package and I’m sure that will be a positive for tourism.”

Tourism Minister Kate Jones was thrilled to see the influx: “What we were hearing from the tourism industry is there is a spike of bookings with borders being reopen.

“People are heading to wonderful tourism icons like here on the Gold Coast, Noosa and the Sunshine Coast.

“These are tough times but the more we free up our economy and allow people to come back and spend locally that means we can support jobs (in) one of the toughest times in Australia’s economic history.”

Asked if she was concerned about interstate transmission now the border was reopened, she said: “This was going to be a concern. I want to commend the tourism industry.

“We’ve worked very closely to develop COVID-safe plans for hotels. Queensland has had in place for months very strong measures in our hotels to make sure social distancing and hand hygiene is implemented.”

She also had a message for those affected by long traffic delays as people cross three border points at Tweed-Coolangatta: “We said there would be delays, we expected delays as hundreds of thousands want to come to Queensland.

“The key message is we’re not out of the woods, we have to continue to be vigilant.”