New Queensland tourism campaign as travel wars heat up

Queensland has unveiled its latest tourism campaign as it attempts to lure more southern holiday-makers to the Sunshine State.

Holiday-makers will be urged to “seize the days” with a Queensland getaway in the state’s latest multimillion-dollar push for tourism supremacy.

The $4.5 million Tourism and Events Queensland campaign, which launches on Sunday, will encourage southerners to book a Sunshine State holiday before the end of the year in a bid to stay ahead of an increasingly competitive tourism market.

The campaign is projected to help generate 6.7 million visitors and inject an estimated $4.4 billion in overnight visitor expenditure for the state’s visitor economy at a time when more people are starting to look overseas for their next holiday after more than two years of international travel bans.

Aura Thorpe, 4, Lily Hassall, 10, Matilda Clarke, 7 and Evie Thorpe, 6 from Currumbin enjoy Queensland’s spectacular weather at Currumbin beach. Picture: Nigel Hallett

In the years before the pandemic, Australians spent more money travelling overseas than international visitors spent on holidays Down Under.

However, with international flights still expensive, there is a growing feeling that more people will continue to holiday inside Australia until international travel prices drop substantially.

The ‘Seize the days” pitch is a reboot of Queensland’s successful “Days like this” campaign with a direct appeal to the state’s biggest tourism markets of NSW and Victoria as well as Queenslanders who aren’t yet ready to head overseas.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council CEO Brett Fraser said new campaigns were “absolutely vital” in keeping the state front of mind for holiday-makers.

“In the past 12-18 months we’ve seen really strong numbers due largely to locals holidaying in their own country and their own state,” he said.

“So as international travel opens up it is really important that we’re able to convince some of these locals of all the great reasons to holiday in Queensland.”

Queensland has traditionally been relegated to third place in tourism terms behind NSW and Victoria, but the Sunshine State jumped to No. 1 on the back of the successful “Good to go” and “Great Queensland Getaway” campaigns which showed Queensland was open for business while other regions struggled through rampant Covid case numbers, lockdowns and travel bans.