Holidays on high in Southern Queensland Country

June 19, 2018 - PRLog -- More than 1.4 million domestic leisure tourists holidayed in Southern Queensland Country in the year to March 2018 – including a record high number of holiday visitors.

The figures, contained in the latest National Visitor Survey (NVS), found the region hosted 655,000 holiday visitors – 20 per cent more than the previous year – as well as 765,000 travellers who came to Southern Queensland Country to visit friends and family.

The NVS data also revealed an 18 per cent surge in the number of holiday nights in the year to March 2018, compared with the previous 12 months from March 2016 – March 2017.

"We clocked up 1.65 million holiday nights from domestic visitors in what is traditionally a quiet period for Southern Queensland Country during the hot summer months," said Southern Queensland Country Tourism (SQCT) Chief Executive Officer Mary-Clare Power.

"It's an outstanding achievement and demonstrates that the efforts our tourism operators have been investing in the long-term plan to raise greater awareness of our spectacular region as a holiday destination during the summer months are starting to bear fruit."

The NVS revealed the holiday-makers came from both interstate as well as other parts of Queensland.

"We had an 18 per cent boost in intrastate holiday visitors to 510,000 people as well as a 29 per cent rise in holiday visitors from other parts of the country," Ms Power said.

The survey found Southern Queensland Country had a total of 2 million overnight visitors in the year to March 2018, including holiday-makers, business people and those visiting friends and family across the region.  All combined, they stayed 5.7 million nights and injected $647 million into the local economy.

"We also had 3.5 million domestic day trippers over the past year, an increase of four per cent," Ms Power said.

"These are really encouraging figures, but there is always more work to do.

"Our next challenge is to urge visitors to Southern Queensland Country to stay longer and experience more of what we have to offer.

"We will be working very closely with our operators in the lead up to summer to develop new ways to maintain this momentum."

ENDS