According to new National Visitor Survey data, Queensland is doing poorly at attracting interstate visitors, compounding the difficulties faced by our tourism sector, which isn’t seeing growth in international visitors (see my post from Monday, International visitor numbers increasing – but Qld doing poorly in attracting them). Furthermore, Queenslanders don’t appear excited about visiting other regions in Queensland, with intra-state holiday visitor numbers down. I’ve copied and pasted the relevant charts below from the latest Tourism and Events Queensland Domestic Tourism Snapshot.

This is somewhat concerning given the significance of tourism to the Queensland economy  – indeed it’s referred to as one of the four pillars (see my earlier post How important is tourism to the Qld economy?). The only qualification I’d make is that the year ending March 2014 data don’t include the 2014 Easter, which, anecdotally, saw strong visitor numbers in Queensland holiday destinations. That said, it seems reasonably clear to me that Queensland’s current tourism promotion efforts have failed and it’s worth considering whether tourism funding could be put to better uses.

Pete Faulkner also covered today’s new tourism data:

Domestic travel result good for TNQ but poor for Qld