Regions bloom as tourism numbers boom

The slump in corporate travel is costing city hotels dearly but it’s a much different story in the regions.

Cassie Atkins from Brisbane and Victoria McInnerney from Rockhampton with Maleah Nelson at Spicers Clovelly at Montville, in the Sunshine Coast. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Regional areas are enjoying a welcome reversal of fortune in the COVID crisis, with hotel bookings leaving those in the cities for dead.

Data from tourism research firm STR showed regional hotels had an average 46 per cent occupancy on Saturday, compared with 26 per cent for city hotels.

Forward bookings suggested the trend would continue as Australians escaped the cities at weekends and in school holidays.

STA Asia Pacific manager Matthew Burke said the poor city hotel occupancy indicated corporate travel had not recommenced, and was unlikely to improve before the end of 2020.

“Airline capacity remains low as corporate travel is restricted, and even as state borders reopen, our capital city markets will see limited midweek travel,” he said.

With five properties in Queensland and four in NSW, Spicers Retreats had seen occupancies at its Sydney and Brisbane hotels slump during COVID, but regional hotels were booming.

Marketing manager Sue Johnson said the contraction of the business and work conference market had taken a toll. “Our property at Potts Point (in Sydney) has about half the occupancy we would normally see and we think that’s because people aren’t travelling for work like they normally would,” she said. “The property in Brisbane is not too far down compared to the same time last year but the regional hotels are definitely up year on year.”

Spicers Clovelly Estate at Montville in the Sunshine Coast hinterland was one of the stars of the group, with most weekends sold out and strong occupancies during the week. “We’re seeing a lot more leisure travellers mid-week, instead of conference delegates, which is of course most welcome,” Ms Johnson said .

“When we ask our guests ‘What brought you here?’ they say we had plans to go to Europe or America but couldn’t travel there, but we still wanted to get away and do something.”

Outside the short-drive market, demand for accommodation is also strong. At Longreach in Queensland’s central west, 12.5 hours’ drive from Brisbane, mayor Tony Rayner said they were in need of more hotels and motels. because the pandemic had delivered a visitor boom to the area, with many tourists making the trip west for the first time.

“We’ve seen real growth in our visitor economy, which is very pleasing because it’s not just in volume, it’s in new markets,” he said. “COVID has created a change in direction for people in terms of where they can go and what they can do. We’ve had a new cohort of tourists.”

He said the surge in fly-in and drive-in tourists had coincided with government-funded upgrades of local attractions such as the Qantas Museum, Stockman’s Hall of Fame and Australian Age of Dinosaurs and Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton.

“We’ve had some really positive feedback from people surprised by the world-class product and world-class facilities here,” he said. “Tourism has come of age for the outback this year.”