Tourism bounces back for Easter after cyclone

Easter is just around the corner and while ex-Tropical Cyclone Debbie has devastated many of North Queensland’s tourism centres, Noosa’s tourism body has confirmed the region is open for business.
Tourism Noosa CEO Damien Massingham said the Easter long weekend and school holidays are looking “extremely strong” for Noosa with the Visitor Information Centre reporting good bookings for the entire period.
Mr Massingham said the storm presented “small challenges” for Noosa, but has assured visitors Noosa is open for business.
“We have received positive feedback post-storm that (tourism providers) are well and truly open and are looking forward to providing a warm Welcome to Noosa to our visitors,” he said.
Mr Massingham’s comments came as Noosa recorded significant growth in domestic visitor spend, numbers and nights in the year to December 2016, with overnight domestic visitors spending more than $716m in Noosa, a 31 per cent increase on the previous year.
The National Visitor Survey for December 2016, recently released by Tourism Research Australia, also showed that 883,000 Australians chose Noosa for an overnight holiday, a 17.5 per cent increase on the previous year, along with visitor nights in Noosa being now 3.5 million nights, a 17.4 per cent rise.
Mr Massingham said these latest figures were a great credit to the local tourism operators and congratulated and thanked them for all their efforts as the increases were significantly higher than the state-wide and national growth.
Mr Massingham said while Noosa was looking strong for Easter, he also wanted to encourage Noosa and the wider community to support northern operators in Mackay and the Whitsundays in whatever way possible.