Howard Salkow

Senior Journalist

Research by Tourism Research Australia does not paint a pretty picture and clearly underlines the impact Covid-19 has had on our tourism industry.

In their national visitor survey for the year-ending December 2021, the most startling figures are the total number of pandemic tourism losses.

Domestic and international tourism losses have totalled $146.6 billion since the start of the pandemic. These losses include:

• $56.2 billion for domestic overnight travel;
• $17.6 billion for domestic day trips;
• $72.8 billion for international travel.

Other results

Domestic trips and spend for year ending December 2021.

For the year ending December 2021:

• Domestic overnight trips fell 30% to 82.1 million.
• Spend fell 25% or $19.9 billion to $60.7 billion.
• Travel restrictions had a greater impact on interstate movement:
• Interstate trips were down 57% to 16.6 million. Spend was down 50% to $22.7 billion.
• Intrastate trips were down 17% to 65.5 million. Spend was up 7% to $38.0 billion.
• Regional areas continued to fare slightly better than capital cities over the year:
• Overnight trips to regional Australia were down 21% to 58.4 million. Spend was down 6% to $39.4 billion.
• Capital city trips were down 45% to 26.9 million. Spend was down 45% to $21.4 billion.

Domestic trips and spend for December quarter 2021

For the December quarter 2021:

• Border restrictions and lockdowns due to the Delta and Omicron outbreaks continued to impact domestic tourism in the December quarter 2021:
• Domestic overnight trips fell 28% to 21.1 million.
• Spend fell 32% or $6.4 billion to $14.0 billion.
• High vaccination rates and the easing of restrictions led to improvements from the September quarter 2021. There was a 50% increase in spend and 78% increase in trips. This is in comparison to the pre-COVID 3-year average per cent change of:
• -1% for spend
• 6% for trips.
  
  

Not all grim news

It is not all grim news as outlined in the TRA report:

“Border restrictions, health regulations and lockdowns due to the Delta and Omicron outbreaks continued to impact domestic tourism in December quarter 2021. When compared to the December quarter of 2019 (pre-pandemic), trips were down 28% and, when compared with 2020 (emerging from first wave of COVID-19), trips were down 3%.

“However, the December 2021 quarter benefitted from higher vaccination rates, an easing of restrictions, and a move towards ‘living with COVID-19’. Therefore, compared with the September 2021 quarter, the December 2021 quarter experienced a 50% increase in spend and 78% increase in trips. This compared to the pre-COVID 3 year average movement of -1% for spend and 6% for trips.

“Over the Christmas-New Year period, early trip rate data showed improvements in the amount of domestic travel being undertaken (Figure 1). In January 2022, almost one-third of respondents reported taking one or more trips in the past four weeks, which included the traditional holiday season part of the December 2021 quarter. The spread of Omicron was nonetheless still likely to have had a softening effect on trip rates during this time.”

Domestic front

On the domestic front, Tourism Tropical North Queensland (TTNQ) Australian visitors spent a record $2.7 billion in Tropical North Queensland during 2021 despite the loss of the key Sydney and Melbourne markets for much of the year, according to the National Visitor Survey.

Tourism Tropical North Queensland (TTNQ) Chief Executive Officer Mark Olsen said overnight domestic visitor expenditure was up 9.3 per cent from 2019 on the back of record intrastate visitation of 1.5 million.

“TTNQ has been actively targeting the Australian travellers who would typically travel overseas and this has helped increase spend per night by 20 per cent on pre-COVID levels to $269 with an average of $1383 spent on each holiday,” he said.

Numbers grew

Mr Olsen said total domestic visitor numbers grew 37 per cent from 2020 to 2 million, but remained 11 per cent below pre-COVID levels.

“The strongest growth came from Brisbane residents with an increase of 10.8 per cent to a record 291,000 compared to 2019,” he said.

“Just 460,000 of our visitors were from interstate, which is not surprising given continued border closures throughout 2021.

“The year started slowly with airport passengers dropping back to 34 per cent of pre-COVID levels in February, followed by record growth over Easter and into the start of winter before Victorian borders closed in July.

“This saw airport passenger numbers drop in August to just 11 per cent of pre-COVID numbers, the lowest levels since the pandemic began.

“Visitors from Adelaide contributed to our interstate arrivals, but passenger numbers remained low until the Queensland borders re-opened to New South Wales and Victoria in mid-December.”

With occupancy increasing, a new business events campaign and Cairns Airport Adventure Festival, the coming months are looking bright for our tourism industry.

Occupancy is consistently climbing in the lead up to Easter where it peaks at 82% dropping back down to 70% by 22 April. This is apparent from statistics provided by Tourism Port Dougals Daintree, sourced through online tools.

The figures are gathered from a range of online accommodation booking platforms for Port Douglas and Daintree.

• Sunday 3 April 43% rises to 65% by Saturday 9 April
• Sunday 10 April 67% rises to 82% by Saturday 16 April
• Sunday 17 April 80% drops to 65% by Saturday 23 April

While May occupancy is currently averaging 48%, however, considering 2020 finished at 80%, TPDD believes short lead bookings will see this rise to at least 70%.

The updated numbers:

Higher cases in some local government areas:

[Douglas Shire 1716]

Brisbane 102,770
Gold Coast City 61,677
Moreton Bay Regional 35,155
Logan City 29,524
Cairns Regional 26,178
Sunshine Coast Regional 26,003
Ipswich City 21,656

Total cases in Queensland: 793,885

Predominant age groups:

10-19 = 69,900 – Female: 36,467; Male: 33,433
20-29 = 104,841 – F: 56,145; M: 48,696
30-39 = 82,605 – F: 44,155; M: 38,450
40-49 = 65,833 – F: 36,042; M: 29,791
** all figures provided by Queensland Health