Saturday 9 September 2017

Whitsundays remains strong through challenging period

The number of international visitors coming to the Whitsundays has risen compared to the same time last year.

According to International Visitor Statistics released on Wednesday (September 6), 241,000 overseas visitors came to the Whitsundays in the year ending June 30, 2017 - an 8.7 per cent increase year-on-year.

Of these 241,000 visitors, 234,000 were on holiday and this figure is a 9.4 per cent increase on holidaymakers for the same 12-month period last year.

Both of these increases were higher than the overall Queensland increases of 5.6 per cent for international visitors and 6.5 per cent for international holidaymakers.

Tourism Whitsundays CEO Craig Turner said it was very encouraging to see these figures, which include the three-month period immediately following TC Debbie at the end of March.

“Considering these figures include the last quarter of the financial year – April, May and June – it is absolutely fantastic that we have still added almost 10 per cent to our international holidaymaker tally, compared to the same period last year,” he said.

“All tourism operators and indeed the whole region should take heart from these visitor figures as we are ahead of the rest of Queensland when it comes to percentage increases and this is after experiencing an extreme weather event!

“It shows that, as an industry, we are doing an outstanding job and it also shows that our marketing and messaging during the past few months is hitting the mark.”

Seven of the Whitsundays top 10 source markets showed increases for the 12-month period including the UK (up 10.1 per cent), China (up 21.9 per cent), Scandinavia (up 14 per cent), New Zealand (up 25.7 per cent), the Netherlands (up 49 per cent), Japan (up 33.5 per cent) and Switzerland (up 20.8 per cent).

In total, 2.6m people visited Queensland in the 12-month period to June 30, 2017, and 1.8m of these were holidaymakers.

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