Coronavirus Australia: Tourism mecca’s plea for funds

Cairns is appealing for federal and state government support as it wrestles with how to revive its tourism industry.

the empty waterfront in Cairns. Picture: Stewart McLean.

The tropical tourism mecca of Cairns is appealing for federal and state government support as it wrestles with how to revive a tourism industry laid low by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The city and the wider far north Queensland region have seen unemployment skyrocket as the aviation traffic that brings visitors from overseas and elsewhere in Australia was reduced to almost zero to combat the virus.

Cairns Mayor Bob Manning said the economic damage the region was going through was huge and the council would need to put off some infrastructure projects without help from Canberra regardless of when the crisis ended.

About one in five jobs in far north Queensland relies on tourism. Estimates put the economic loss to the region from COVID-19 at $2.5bn, with 13,600 jobs lost.

Mr Manning, a veteran of local tourism who ran the Cairns Port Authority when the pilots’ strike hit the region 30 years ago, is optimistic about the future of the Cairns economy. “I have seen Cairns come out of the pilots’ strike and the Ansett collapse better than when it went into them.”

However, he said no one knew the extent of damage that the pandemic would cause. “If you’re 18 points down at half time, you’ve got to get back on to the field thinking you will win the game.”

Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Mark Olsen said the region’s reliance on aviation to drive the economy meant it would suffer longer than other parts of Australia from the impact of the virus: “Before this, 54 per cent of all overnight visitors to Cairns arrived by plane.”

The region needed support in promoting its attractions to visit­ors and support for aviation to ensure freight and other industries outside of tourism could continue.

Mr Olsen said state and federal governments needed to inject more funding into the region and boosting the tourism market share would require a $10m a year ­investment in marketing and ­promotion.

The industry is hoping for state government help to kickstart intra­state travel, likely to be the first source of visitors when travel bans are lifted.

Since early February, when Cairns was among the first Australian cities to suffer economic loss from the coronavirus, the state government has pumped money into tourism campaigns focusing on far north Queensland.

Mr Olsen expected visitors from elsewhere in Queensland would start coming to the region from June, with interstate travel unlikely to resume in earnest until October or November.

International visitors were unlikely to return until next year.

Mr Manning said the far north Queensland region had not done as well as other regions in attracting government support in the past. “Per head of population, if we had had the same amount of support as central Queensland and Mackay, we would have had $3.2bn spent here over the past eight years,” he said.