Travellers and airlines forge new domestic holiday routes

Eager to tap into pent-up demand for travel, airlines are launching a slew of new domestic routes as they seek to circumvent border closures.

Brisbane to Cairns is the most popular route for Qantas as travellers rethink their traditional holiday destinations. Picture: Brendan Radke

The COVID crisis has spawned a spate of new air routes in Australia as airlines seek to circumvent troublesome border closures.

With Victoria still closed and NSW off limits to some states, carriers have been forced to get creative with flights in an effort to meet pent-up demand for travel.

As a result, holiday-makers can now fly direct from Canberra to Ballina with Pelican Airlines, from Canberra to the Gold Coast with QantasLink, Sunshine Coast to Cairns and Sunshine Coast to Canberra with Alliance or, from December 1, Gold Coast-Hobart with Jetstar.

The new Jetstar route will follow the reopening of Tasmania’s borders to most states, providing 1200 seats a week on three return flights.

Qantas Domestic CEO Andrew David said new routes were being launched in response to demand, with the possibility of more to come.

“We know there’s huge pent-up demand for air travel and we’ve seen families travelling to new places during the (September) school holidays because they weren’t able to get to their traditional holiday destinations,” Mr David said.

“We’ve added more flights to these popular destinations and launched new routes where we’ve seen demand. As restrictions are lifted we expect this demand to increase.”

As a result of the unavailability of some destinations, Qantas’s top five routes in the holiday period were markedly different from the same time a year ago.

Regions were the big winners, with Brisbane-Cairns up from 14th to first, Perth-Broome climbing from 20th to second and Brisbane-Townsville up from 11th to third.

Fourth most popular was Sydney-Adelaide, up from eighth last year, followed by Canberra-Brisbane, which was the 17th most booked route in 2019.

Virgin Australia reported Brisbane-Hamilton Island as the “standout performer” in the September school holidays, and also saw strong last-minute bookings for Adelaide-Brisbane and Adelaide-Gold Coast.

Analysis of hotel bookings by travel technology company Amadeus reflected the airlines’ data, with head of hospitality Maria Taylor observing that “in the age of COVID-19, historical trends no longer apply”.

Occupancy rates showed a healthy surge in most states and territories other than Victoria heading into the September school holidays, exceeding that recorded in June.

Most reservations are made within a week of arrival, compared with 28 days historically.