Gold Coast braces for Easter crowd
The Gold Coast’s tourism industry is surging back from its COVID-19 slump and is expecting bumper crowds this Easter break.
Experience Gold Coast CEO John Warn said the latest Tourism Research Australia results revealed the Gold Coast’s post-pandemic continued growth trajectory. “In the twelve months to December, the Gold Coast generated $7.8 billion in total visitor expenditure and welcomed 12.2 million total visitors, up 31.1 per cent and down 13.9 per cent respectively, on 2019 levels,” Mr Warn said. “Domestically, the Gold Coast outperformed the state and national results on a growth percentage basis, with 4.1 million domestic overnight visitors.
This included strong intrastate growth from Brisbane with 1.4 million visitors surpassing 2019 levels by 5.9 per cent.
“Encouragingly, the Gold Coast maintained its domestic tourism leadership with 22 per cent of all holiday visitors in Queensland for the year.” At the same time, day trip visitors continued to show their support with 7.4 million day-trippers.
The expected full return of international visitors has been constrained by global events and a hyper-competitive market that is now starting to embrace long-haul travel again.
Mr Warn said international visitation had so far recovered by almost 57 per cent having welcomed 612,000 international visitors with top source markets including New Zealand, the UK, South Korea, USA, and Japan.
Experience Gold Coast Head of Visitor Economy & Corporate Relations Rachel Hancock said the city was preparing to welcome an influx of visitors this Easter with the school holidays worth up to $268 million locally. “The short-term pick up in accommodation bookings remains reasonably strong at 7 per cent which is up on the same period last year,” Ms Hancock said.
“Overall, we anticipate accommodation providers will be heading through 80 per cent occupancy this weekend, but we’re still encouraging last-minute holidaymakers to book now for Easter and beyond.”