In November 2019, the Southern Great Barrier Reef (SGBR) will travel to Europe and the UK as part of the annual Queensland on Tour program, run by Tourism and Events Queensland.
The sales mission will see the SGBR meeting over 300 travel agents and tourism retailers to promote the spectacular blue skies, warm beaches and hospitality of the destination in the middle of the northern hemisphere winter.
The destination saw 141,000 international visitors in the year ending June 2019, up 2.5% across 3 years. Overnight visitor expenditure in the region increased by 10.2% to $102.6m with holidays the main reason for international travel to the region, accounting for 79% of visitation.
Western markets dominate the region's top international source markets, accounting for 82% of international visitation to the region. The top markets are the United Kingdom (23,000 visitors), Germany (20,000) and New Zealand (17,000 visitors) with noticeable growth from France and the Nordic region.
These figures follow ten years of work and investment by the SGBR marketing initiative, Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) Bundaberg Tourism, Gladstone Area Promotions and Development Ltd and Capricorn Enterprise.
The SGBR marketing initiative promotes the southern-most 300kms of the Great Barrier Reef throughout Australia and the world in a ground-breaking Queensland partnership that is achieving results akin to those of larger and more established destinations with considerably larger budgets.
The SGBR Tourism Trade Distribution program has seen multiple SGBR tourism operators contracted with Wholesalers and Inbound Tour Operators, and the participation in Queensland on Tour Europe and the UK in 2019 is the perfect opportunity to visit some of our major trade partners in their own (albeit cold) regions!
