Overseas campaign blitz proves a hit for Reef tourism
Shire industry
A record international marketing blitz has helped propel the Great Barrier Reef to the forefront of many travellers’ bucket lists across the world in the past year, according to the latest report by industry body Tourism Tropical North Queensland.
About 110 international campaigns were run across 2024/25 in a host of countries including the US, England, Japan and China, funded through the Federal Government’s $15m five-year International Tourism Recovery Program, designed to help the region recover from Covid-19 and Cyclone Jasper.
The most successful examples included the Guardian of the Reef travel campaign in the US and UK, which TTNQ said reached about five billion viewers, and the Lifetime of Greatness push to have the Reef be declared the first non-human to win a UN Environment Program Lifetime Achievement Award, which now has more than 1.3 million signatories.
TTNQ chair John O’Sullivan said bookings across the past two years had already generated close to 200,000 more international visitors to Far North Queensland.
“TTNQ’s management has made the best use of the funding to deliver exceptional results that have exceeded targets,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
And recent lobbying of the Federal Government has secured an extra $3m to help fund more campaigns across the next two years now that the ITRP grants have come to an end, the report outlined.
TTNQ chief executive Mark Olsen said the GOTR campaign had generated $13.4m in sales across the entire Reef region, and the LOG project had also been highly successful - it was launched in April to help drive global publicity and more Reef visits.
Mr Olsen said the international market focus also included four new direct international routes starting up in 2024/25 - although one of those, AirAsia flights between Cairns and Bali, no longer operated.
“Since the borders reopened, international visitor spend in Tropical North Queensland has rebounded to nearly $1.1 billion, on par with 2019 expenditure, powered by the strong partnership of the tourism industry, TTNQ and Cairns Airport,” Mr Olsen said.
“International visitor expenditure now supports nearly one-quarter of the one-in-six jobs in our community that depend on tourism.”
The other new direct plane routes introduced in 2024/25 were Cathay Pacific starting seasonal flights from Hong Kong across Chinese New Year, Fiji Airways starting flights to and from Nadi in April with links to the US, and Jetstar flying year-round to Christchurch, New Zealand, starting last August.
Data for the year ending March, 2025, showed TNQ attracted more than 550,000 international visitors, up 13.4 per cent on the year before, but those travellers stayed an average of 1.8 nights less.
The industry will face some challenges this year, however, with the TTNQ budget forecasted to drop to less than a third of the 2024/25 one.
“Alternative forms of sustainable funding are needed for TTNQ to continue to deliver the record return on investment the organisation has delivered,” the report read.
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