Noosa's International Tourism Appeal Soars
- Written by Susan Ewington
Noosa continues to increase its impressive share of high-spending international visitors with strong growth in spend and visitor numbers, both percentage increases being significantly higher than the national and state-wide growth.
Tourism Noosa CEO Damien Massingham said that the latest International Visitor Survey results reveal another quarter of significant growth from all of Noosa's major markets, with a five year high for visitor nights and a record for international numbers and spend in Noosa.
“Noosa's international spend increased 83.7% to $116.1million as compared to the national expenditure increase of 8.1% and state expenditure increase, being just 4%.”
“This immense increase in the amount that visitors are spending in Noosa is a reflection of the targeted activity that the Tourism Noosa team have undertaken into attracting high-yielding international markets and is a great benefit for all in Noosa, as this additional injection of dollars into our economy means that local jobs are retained and created.”
“Noosa's international spend increased across all our major markets, with Germany up 120% to $10 million, the UK up 84.4% to $22 million, USA up 61.1% to $4.4 million and New Zealand up 36.4% to $25.5 million.”
Overall the growth in international visitors to Noosa was nearly twice that of the state, with Noosa's visitor numbers increasing by 19.5% while Queensland was up by 10.2%. Visitor numbers to Australia rose 11.3% to 7.5 million.
The number of nights that visitors stayed in Noosa increased by 9.4% while for Queensland as a whole visitor nights dropped slightly by 2.3%.
“Noosa enjoyed significant growth in visitor nights from our key markets with New Zealand increasing 25.3% to 174,000 nights, UK up 11% to 202,000 and Germany surging by 73.5% to reach 118,000 nights.”
“This continued international growth highlights Noosa's strengthened appeal to the international market, backed up by the recent inclusion of Noosa as one of only two Australian destinations and the only Queensland destination in the 50 Best Places to Travel in 2017 list by the world's most influential travel brand – Travel + Leisure.”
“Tourism Noosa has a clear strategic priority on marketing to high-spending international markets, guided by our Global Market Strategy, which sets a vision to build a sustainable global market for Noosa, focusing on value over volume to achieve maximum benefit for the Noosa economy and local businesses.”
“In January and February of this year, Tourism Noosa's marketing team has been active in key markets, travelling to the UK, Europe and USA to meet with hundreds of senior retail trade partners, updating them on Noosa product and reinforcing the destination as a must in their client's travel itineraries.”
“We also introduced our Global Ready Industry Program this year which has been designed to ensure the availability and diversity of international-ready product and aims to provide our tourism operators with the tools, knowledge and expertise to develop and market their businesses internationally.”
“We have five Tourism Noosa members taking part in the Program and will be taking four new products with us to the Australian Tourism Exchange in May for an invaluable introduction to the inbound market and key global players.”
“This commitment by Tourism Noosa's members to enhance their product and improve their understanding of the international market is outstanding, and I want to congratulate all those businesses who are delivering quality service each and every day and welcoming these important overseas visitors to Noosa, along with our industry partners including Tourism Australia for this great result for Noosa,” said Mr Massingham.
