Cheap flights ‘aimed at wrong places’

Tourism chiefs say $1.2bn revival package misses the mark: places like Broome were already booked solid.

Tourists riding on camels on Cable Beach at Broome. WA tourist officials say the destination was booked solid before it was added to the half-price airfares list. Picture: Supplied

Broome, one of the 15 destinations for which the government is providing half-price flights, is already fully booked according to the WA Tourism Council that is pleading for Perth’s inclusion in the scheme and warning up to 20,000 jobs in the city are at stake.

The half-price flights — the centrepiece of the government’s $1.2bn package to revive tourism and aviation — are being attacked by critics who warn some of the routes, including several to the Sunshine Coast and Broome, have already been enjoying record visitor numbers and bookings.

“Where are all these new ­visitors going to sleep? On the beach?” asked West Australian travel agent Callum Chambers.

Matthew Findlay, a director at Ailevon Pacific Aviation Consulting, said the criteria on which the discounted airfares were selected — all of which apply only to interstate routes — was “not entirely clear”.

While airfares from Sydney to Hamilton Island off Queensland were given the 50 per cent discount, Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics data showed that passengers on flights from Brisbane to the popular holiday destination were running at 22,300 in December. This was nearly double the 12,000 passengers who travelled from Brisbane to Hamilton Island ­before the pandemic in December 2019.

Under the government’s package, 800,000 fares on 15 routes will be subsidised by taxpayers to help stimulate domestic travel and ­assist airlines. Virgin Australia and Jetstar did not wait for the government subsidies to kick in, announcing flash, half-price sales for Friday afternoon.

WA Tourism Council chief executive Evan Hall said that including flights to Broome from Darwin, Sydney and Melbourne in the package meant bookings rolled over from last year would be even more secure. But he argued Broome was not the West Australian tourist destination most in need of government support.

He said other locations such as Margaret River risked losing holidayers to tourist attractions in other states, including the five designated locations in Queensland: Cairns, Hamilton Island, Proserpine, Maroochydore and the Gold Coast.

“Broome is fully booked with interstate visitors,” he said. “The worst affected destination is Perth because it’s the gateway for international and interstate visitors and the gateway for regional WA.

“What we are seeing in WA is that regional accommodation is busy. Perth accommodation is dead in the water.”

Mr Hall said that up to 20,000 tourism workers in Perth risked losing their jobs once the JobKeeper payments ended at the end of March.

Spicers Hotel Group managing director David Assef said smaller regional centres such as Armidale, Toowoomba, Tamworth and Coffs Harbour would have ­derived considerable benefit from cheap flights. “It’s just odd, the limited number of routes selected to share in such a large number of cheap fares,” he said. “To me it doesn’t quite add up.”

Mr Findlay argued the package was aimed at reviving the aviation sector, citing data showing that load factors — the number of passengers carried as a proportion of available seats — was running at about 65 per cent in December, down from about 82.5 per cent the previous December when more planes were in operation.

“You would hope that load factors in the first quarter of 2021 have crept higher to ensure the sustainability and dynamism in the aviation sector … But it’s most likely that is not the case which is why this package warranted,” Mr Findlay said.

Airlines were reaping immediate rewards from Thursday’s ­announcement, with Qantas experiencing a 40 per cent surge in domestic booking inquiries and a 75 per cent leap in searches on the airline website.