Record visitor numbers and spending boost Fraser Coast economy

2018-06-20

The Fraser Coast tourism industry hit new highs in the year to March with a record number of domestic visitors coming to the region and spending record amounts, according to the latest National Visitor Survey data released today.

The results, published by Tourism Research Australia, showed 718,000 visitors spent $424.9 million on the Fraser Coast in the year ending March. On three trend comparison, the spend for the year increased 15% and visitor numbers were up 8%.

Fraser Coast Tourism & Events general manager Martin Simons said the figures were the best since the period after the global financial crisis, when tourism visitation began to suffer major declines.

“The last high point for Fraser Coast domestic visitation was the year to June 2009 when 701,000 visitors to the region spent $384 million.

“It’s been a long recovery but it’s great to see record numbers of visitors coming to the Fraser Coast and making such a strong contribution to the local economy,” he said.

The increase was on the back of holiday traffic, which was up 13% on the three-year trend to 414,000. People visiting friends and relatives (VFR) was also up 3% to 225,000, which was a strong turnaround on recent numbers.

The increases pushed total visitor nights to a record high of 3.3 million, up 12% on the three-year average.

Mr Simons said the strong growth included a period when the Fraser Coast was investing in new events, such as the By the C concert headlined by John Farnham, which attracted a 40% out of region audience.

“We are also receiving good spin-off from strong holiday visitor growth to Queensland, with more than 75% of the region’s domestic visitation from intrastate”.

The region’s single largest visitor market of Brisbane was up 7.5% in the year to 237,000. Total intrastate visitation of 543,000 was up 7%.

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Brisbane itself attracted 3.4% more visitors than the previous year to reach 6.9 million, driven by a 17.7% hike in holiday visitors to a record 2 million.

The Fraser Coast also recorded an 11.1% rise in interstate visitors to 175,000 with 106,000 of them from New South Wales.

All of this activity increased Fraser Coast holiday nights by 17.2% on the three-year average to 2 million and the average length of a holiday stay climbed 2.5% to 4.9 nights. This helped boost total average length of stay to 4.5 nights (up 3.1%) and the spend per day was also 2% higher at $130.

The number of domestic day trippers slipped 3.4% to 602,000 in the year to March.

The March results also delivered a record for Queensland with 8.7 million holiday visitors, a lift of 6.3% on the year before, and they spent a record $7.4 billion, up 5.5%.

The additional holiday spend helped boost total visitor spending in Queensland to a new high of $16.2 billion, a rise of 5.8% on the previous corresponding period.

And to complete the round of records, national domestic visitation also hit record levels in the year to March, with 97.8 million total visitors spending $65.1 billion, increases of 6.7% and 5.5% respectively on the previous year.

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