Voucher boost for suffering tourist meccas, Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef

Queenslanders will be given a $200 voucher to spend on holidays in Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef under a Palaszczuk government scheme.

Paul Kappal, Sebastian Kappel and Michas Richter play cricket at Ellis beach near Cairns.

Queenslanders will be given a $200 voucher to spend on holidays in Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef under a Palaszczuk government scheme to help boost business in COVID-hit tourist destinations.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk unveiled the scheme on Sunday and left the door open to offering the vouchers in other tourist towns struggling with the loss of overseas visitors.

Queensland would normally have 2.7 million overseas tourists visit during the year, worth $6bn to the state’s economy.

Ms Palaszczuk announced the scheme as she continued her ­attack on the federal government for failing to agree to extend JobKeeper for certain industries ­beyond this month.

Under the voucher scheme, Queenslanders will have three days to apply for one of 15,000 vouchers that will cover up to 50 per cent of a booked tourism experience, to the value of $200.

It will cover travel from next Monday to June 25, and is ex­pected to generate an extra $14m in visitor spending in far north Queensland.

Eligible tourism experiences could include boat or bus tours, reef experiences, scenic flights, short day trips, multi-day tours, spa experiences, galleries and ­exhibitions.

Ms Palaszczuk said it was possible that the scheme could be ­expanded to others parts of the state ahead of the Easter holidays. “But at the moment, the Cairns operators are really feeling the brunt of this,” she said. “Thousands of international tourists would have been coming to Cairns during this time of year.”

Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief executive Daniel Gschwind said other regions were interested in the assistance.

He said the Whitsundays and the Gold Coast had also suffered from the lack of overseas visitors.

“Some people may not realise how much the Gold Coast has suffered,” he said.

“Although it’s busy on the weekend, they have huge capacity that is unused at the moment and a voucher system like this would definitely work for the Gold Coast as well.

“It is certainly an offer I think that the Queensland government is extending to other regions and we want to see this happen ­obviously to give that confidence back to the tourism industry.”

Ms Palaszczuk said federal government assistance needed to be continued for some industries, such as tourism, ­beyond March 28.

Last week, Australian Tourism Industry Council executive director Simon Westaway said members had ­accepted JobKeeper would not be continued and were hopeful of a “clear run on borders” now that the COVID-19 vaccination rollout had begun.

“What we really need is for people to have greater confidence to travel,” Mr Westaway said.

“If states in particular do the right thing on border arrangements moving forward, that’s going to help a lot.”