Nothing Beats a Good Idea

It seems our State and Regional Tourism organizations have no other ideas of getting more visitors to North Queensland, except more advertisements.

What we need now are innovative, smart and practical ideas, innovations and projects to deliver tourists, rather than make them consider visiting.

Twittersphere is full of Nth QLD tourism operators, and I don't think one of them will say I am wrong when I say that we desperately need more tourists delivered to us, and now.

So, we need to look at why people are going overseas or other parts of Australia rather than here to the Whitsundays, and North QLD, and to address those issues.

Let's look at Airlie Beach:
When Queenslanders search for travel information about the Whitsundays, its 50/50 Airlie Beach / Hamilton Island.
When NSW folks look to holiday in the Whitsundays, its around 33/66 Airlie Beach / Hamilton Island.
When VIC folks look to holiday in the Whitsundays, its around 25/75 Airlie Beach / Hamilton Island.

It appears the difference in preferences between Airlie Beach and Hamilton Island by Queenslanders & those Interstate is that Queenslanders can drive here.
The second most important difference is direct flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Hamilton Island, where as Proserpine only receives flights from Brisbane.

You could say that there is a huge market the mainland is missing out on - the interstate family with their own car.

This brings up the idea of a Bass Strait style Car Ferry / Ship, with cabins, that would travel non-stop between Brisbane and Cairns. This would deliver a unique 'two holidays for the price and time of one' - a cruise and a drive holiday. The benefit to Airlie Beach would be the increased visitors arriving in by car on their journey through after witnessing the Whitsundays from a ships deck.

The ships would also still deliver driving visitors and backpackers when the Bruce Highway is cut at Rockhampton again.

A Car Ferry service between Brisbane & Cairns may may deliver 500 families a week, with freedom to move and choose and explore villages and towns away from the airports.

But that is just one idea. In the twittersphere I've heard that some of the problems are booking agents taking large commissions, creating inflated prices for tours. If the agents dropped their commission by half (currently between 25%-33%), then the tours would be 10%-15% cheaper.

A business person in Port Douglas suggests that we should increase the Departure Tax on Australians going overseas so as to encourage them to holiday in Australia, and in particular up here.

I don't think throwing money into more advertising (which hasn't worked since 'Queensland, where the Sun shines') or a new slogan is going to help.

Do you have any ideas? What are your thoughts?