Revealed: where NSW is holidaying now
The closure of the border with Queensland may be inconvenient, but experts say our tourism sector could benefit as a result - particularly in the north of the state.
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Queensland will shut its border to NSW on Saturday at 1am, but the move could prove beneficial to NSW’s struggling tourism industry, experts believe.
Data had already been showing that the Byron Bay region had become the most popular destination for road-trip holiday makers within NSW, and the border closure could further strengthen that trend.
Australian Tourism Industry Council executive director Simon Westaway said that for travellers who would ordinarily go to Queensland, the Byron Bay area represented “the next best thing”.
A Road Trip Index generated by data from travellers using TripTech apps highlights the steady week-on-week increase of holiday traffic to various parts of the state, with the laid-back North Coast recording the strongest growth of all NSW regions.
Over the past five weeks, the area stretching from Ballina to Tweed Heads has recorded an average growth in holiday traffic of more than five per cent each week.
Trips to the outback of the state (taking in mining towns including Broken Hill, Minindee, Silverton, White Cliffs and Bourke) have also been rising, with an average increase in road trippers of 3.7 per cent per week.
The data comes from a suite of 14 TripTech apps produced for car hire companies, accommodation providers and RV hire companies and includes CamperMate, which has over two million downloads.
Tourism experts say the encouraging figures are the green shoots of a recovering industry, and show that Sydney-based road trippers are venturing further afield than “close to home” destinations such as the Blue Mountains.
“Even at this early stage of what will be a long road back to recovery, our launched Independent Road Travel Index is showing a clear and sustainable increase in the number of Australians who are returning to travel and they’re almost exclusively doing so by road,” said TripTech CEO Nick Baker.
“The road trip is not just back in vogue, but it could be here to stay and become entrenched as the primary and most popular means of tourist and leisure travel within and across Australia.”
Mr Westaway told News Corp that although talk had raced ahead to discussion of trans-Tasman bubbles, the reality was that intrastate travel was all that was available right now.
“It’s human nature to be optimistic, but some of the optimism around the reopening of the travel market, both domestically and internationally, has needed to be parked, and we need to be a bit more realistic about where things are at,” he said.
Caravan Industry Association CEO Stuart Lamont said there had been a “resurgence of activity towards caravanning and camping roadtrips”, with increases in caravan park occupancy, as well as more enquiries at dealerships.
In NSW, cabins had 62 per cent occupancy over the July school holidays and power sites were at 44 per cent – a rate that Mr Lamont said was four times higher than that of just two months prior.
“Border restrictions have also meant that the traditional migration of caravanners from the south to the north has been disrupted and they are instead looking for local alternatives,” he said.
The national data shows that Queenslanders have taken to the road trip holiday with particular gusto: seven of the top 10 holiday traffic growth areas in the country are in the Sunshine State.
But the data also shows how badly some tourism regions have been hit; the North Coast area figures are down 38.5 per cent on the same time in 2019, while the Outback region is down 40 per cent on the same time last year.
The industry remains in a precarious position, with other NSW regions showing visitor growth in some weeks, and big declines in others.
The Riverina/Murray region had growth of 3.6 per cent in the first week of the July school holidays, but an almost 9 per cent decline the week after, and a further 16 per cent decline the week after that.
Similar figures were recorded over the same period for the NSW south coast.
Mr Westaway said the closure of the Victorian border was a “handbrake” on tourism growth.
“Victoria represents the largest or second largest interstate market for every other state and territory in Australia,” he said. “Victorians are big travellers and they always chase the sun through our winter.”