COUNCILLOR BOB MANNING: OAM MAYOR, CAIRNS REGIONAL COUNCIL

Access to appropriate and sustainable funding for tourism is fundamental to economic growth.

Tourism influences a wide range of non-tourism community outcomes including access to healthcare and education, social and cultural participation, and jobs in supporting industry sectors.

In Cairns and the Tropical North, we are well and truly bouncing back after COVID-19. Tourists are returning to our region. We’ve had record domestic visitor expenditure of $3.12 billion in 2021-2022, and Tropical North Queensland has claimed the No.3 destination nationally in Google search trends for travel in the past few years.

However, results like these are powered by effective destination marketing, funded in large part through temporary State and Federal Government support programs.

With more and more destinations around the world competing for the visitor dollar, a sustained step change to tourism promotion investment is now needed to ensure Queensland destinations can retain and grow their share of the global tourism market.

A visitor levy, facilitated through a change in State legislation, can deliver this step change investment, providing the tourism sector with security while also taking financial pressure off ratepayers and reducing the burden on the State’s balance sheet.

Here in the Cairns region, we have been championing the idea of the visitor levy for around five years.

Under the proposed opt-in approach, a visitor levy would give regions the financial autonomy to promote their destination, without an impost on ratepayers, to claw back market share lost to rival domestic and international locations.

For Cairns, our numbers show that a small, 2.5% levy on overnight accommodation revenue (incl Airbnb) can generate $16 million annually to be spent attracting more visitors to Cairns. Why accommodation? Because it’s broadly based and will catch all visitors except for those staying with family and friends.

And the ultimate beneficiaries will be accommodation providers. Every dollar collected will be spent promoting the regions through Regional Tourism Organisations to get visitor numbers back up in terms of both occupancy and yield.

Raising the same amount from ratepayers is just not feasible. A user-pays visitor levy is a much fairer way to ensure Queensland’s tourism industry can thrive, while residents benefit from the flow-on impact to our economy and jobs.

This is not something new. We’re just catching up with the rest of the world as tourism levies are global. Some 50 countries including Europe, Thailand, Bali, New Zealand and the US are well ahead of us on this. And there is no evidence that any city with a tourism levy has seen visitor numbers drop.

Governments are voted in to make decisions on behalf of their communities and Local governments should have the choice, in consultation with communities, whether to implement a visitor levy.

There are no downsides at the polls for the State on this legislative reform – Local Government is on the front line for the final decision.

The proposal had overwhelming support at the recent LGAQ conference. I would welcome your leadership and support in now delivering this major reform.