David Gardiner

Journalist

TOURISM RECOVERY

Tourism recovery is a key area which hospitality and other Douglas businesses will be looking forward to in 2023, after a sluggish post-COVID improvement in 2022.

There was certainly no shortage of domestic travellers wanting to come to Queensland holiday hot spots like Douglas.

Sadly however, the region was hampered by the same problems as virtually everywhere else in Australia – a post pandemic shortage of hospitality and tourism staff, meaning hotels, resorts and other accommodation could not run to full capacity.

A report by the federal government’s Tourism Research Australia (TRA) just recently showed Queensland’s total domestic visitor nights increased this year to 107,000 – compared to the peak pandemic year of 2020 – at just 66,000.

But international tourism recovery is a completely different story. That same report predicts total visitor arrivals in Australia will take some time.

In 2022, mostly ‘post-COVID’, Australia’s visitor arrivals were at 3.4-million, well up from the previous year’s lowly 246K.

The document predicts 2024 will improve to 6.1-million arrivals, but still well down from pre-COVID levels of 9.4-million.

“Overall, we forecast visitor arrivals to move higher than pre-pandemic levels in 2025 and total 11.0 million by 2027. International spend will return to pre-pandemic levels earlier, in 2024,” the report predicted.

Tourism strategists and marketers in Douglas will no doubt be doing their utmost to try to entice as many of those overseas tourists to the region as they can.

RENTAL HOUSING IMPROVES

Douglas businesses, hospitality and tourism workers, shop owners and the general population will be hoping that the rental accommodation crisis experienced in 2022 will ease in the New Year.

A lot will depend on how many new rental homes come online, and while there are large new areas earmarked for residential development, the pace of buildings actually being constructed has slowed due to the cross-industry problem of skills and trades shortages.

The state government has made it easier for property owners to rent out ‘granny flats’ and similar accommodation, and the ‘Adopt A Worker’ will continue in Douglas, hopefully helping towards rental availabilities in 2023.

Resort and hotel owners have also done their bit to help – by purchasing rooms, apartments and other accommodation to house their staff.

There have been some good signs already, with rental listings increasing in recent weeks compared to nearly none just a few months ago.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

The case for a regular, timetabled public bus service within Douglas and linking the area to Cairns is an issue that had a good run in 2022 and will most likely chug along in coming months.

What’s needed at this point appears to be some sort of comprehensive publicly accountable survey or feasibility study, showing the likely level of use such a public transport service would get.

One of the main questions would be, at what level of viability would the state government be happy to subsidise such a regular (and costly) public bus service, so that it does not have to fully fund it?

Campaigner David Haratsis’s idea – to have a trial service – might be a sound proposal, but the government would still need to be convinced about its viability before it would agree to fund such a trial.