Bonza celebrates 50,000 customers as regional tourism grows

Flights into Toowoomba Wellcamp airport have opened up the region to tourism, and it is not just the domestic market they are capturing, but the growth of nature-based visitors hailing from around the world. Find out why they come:

The first Bonza flight from Melbourne lands at Toowoomba Wellcamp Airport on April 17, 2023.

Toowoomba is becoming the gateway to the “green in the middle” of Queensland as Bonza celebrates its first year flying from Toowoomba Wellcamp with 50,000 customers.

With regular flights between Sydney (QANTAS) and Melbourne and Townsville (Bonza) this has meant the Garden City now has access to an international market, catching the flow of visitors coming through the southern capitals and even up to Townsville, Southern Queensland Country Tourism chief executive Peter Homan said.

This has “fabulous” consequences for the region, kicking starting what he described as “a long-haul game” of building up the region to become an international nature-based destination.

Mr Homan said it usually takes about two years before the region will see real knock-on effects, comparing Gold Coast’s long, but successful tourism campaign to attract international visitors.

Southern Queensland Country CEO Peter Homan. (2014) Picture: Kevin Farmer

“This didn’t happen overnight,” he said.

Toowoomba will attract a different type of tourist to the Gold Coast though as it caters to more independent travellers, usually looking for smaller family activities rather than large group tours, and interested in the food, wine, small agribusinesses, and nature-based tourism.

This is the “green in the middle between the blue on the ocean and the red of the centre,” he said.

International travellers coming to the region for now tend to be mostly coming from New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore, with India as an up and coming growth market, Mr Homan said.

One of the biggest challenges the region faces is providing accommodation, and currently demand far outweighs supply.

Mr Homan was optimistic this would catch up in the next few years.

By the end of the decade he said he expected to see 10-15 per cent of our tourists to be international travellers as more planes will start flying from the airport.

“Once they’ll discover us, they’ll keep coming back,” he said.