It is game day, so where’s the plan?

PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk’s decision to spend more than $200m on securing more flights to the Gold Coast is a good news story. But the take-off needs to be fast. The Bulletin has long campaigned for a tourism road map to take this city out of the Covid black clouds, putting pressure on the government to match what our rivals in NSW and Western Australia intend to rollout to attract overseas arrivals.

The announcement shows the government and tourism leaders are listening. But what are their plans?

For months, we’ve heard that strategists have a plan ready that will put us ahead of our rivals once the international borders reopen. That is February 21, so let’s see it. Tourism was worth more than $6bn to the Gold Coast economy in 2019 but two years of lockdowns and border closures wiped $5bn off it. Flights went from about 420 a week at the Gold Coast Airport to a handful.

Talk to operators in Surfers Paradise, at Broadbeach and further north on the Broadwater, and they are hopeful that change is about to happen.

Experienced tourism business owners are expecting the international market will recover in the next few months. Privately, they are preparing to boost their operations again. For some, they have lost 90 per cent of their business.

However, they are worried that the government and tourism boffins have not used the past months to come up with a collective battle plan to win over the world.

They fear the industry will be left to ripen organically and the old, old will be trotted out when the time should have been used to work on new relationships in the background. Breakfasts for $1 on the Fraser Coast will not cut it.

As one said: “Tourism chiefs have had two years to get this right.”

As much as the Palaszczuk government has been judged on keeping Queenslanders safe from the virus, we are moving to the next stage of handling the economic recovery.

Treasurer Cameron Dick last year talked about the Coast economy “roaring back to life” after a billion-dollar spend on light rail, new train stations and Pacific Motorway upgrades.

A lot of that is happening, but it was all about infrastructure. The Treasurer at that time did not mention tourism in his Budget speech.

Labor is in the spotlight now to deliver on this. For once, during Covid, blame cannot be attributed to the federal government.