The Alice Springs region will receive $3.5 million in Federal Government tourism funding to be spent on marketing and festivals to try and help the region deal with the massive decline in international visitors caused by COVID-19 restrictions.
Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham announced $50 million from next month’s budget to be shared across nine regions including tropical Queensland and Tasmania, with Tasmania getting the biggest share at $13 million. His adviser Benn Ayer said they aimed to spend the Alice Springs money this financial year and that it would be given to both tourism body and Territory Government initiatives.
Federal Government figures provided to the media has Alice Springs attracting 265,000 international tourists annually, spending more than $240 million. Tourism NT’s Tourism Research Australia’s figures for the year to March had 91,000 international holiday makers visit the Alice Springs MacDonnell region, and 149,000 visiting the Lasseter region which includes Uluru. But these would have included some of the same people visiting both areas. It is also had 193,000 domestic tourists visiting Alice and 218,000 visiting Lasseter.
The NT figures come with the commentary that due to COVID-19, international visitors declined 29 per cent for Central Australia – which takes in the Barkly as well – for the March quarter 2020 compared to the same quarter in 2019. The total international visitors for the quarter was 33,000.
For the year ending ending March 2020, Tourism NT had 500,000 people in total visiting the Alice Springs MacDonnell region, a figure which has up 19 per cent, and spending of $460 million. While they had 415,000 people visiting Lasseter, up 1.6 per cent, and spending $512 million.
They have not released June quarter figures.
According to NT Government figures as at 8am Sunday, 89,767 had crossed into the Northern Territory since blanket 14 quarantine measures ended on July 17 but it does not provide figures in how many people left.
On top of the lack of visitors, Alice Springs has been having trouble with crime, including it interrupting one of its biggest tourism events .
During the Parrtjima Festival in mid September, NT Major Events called off a string of events due to take place at Todd Mall in the centre of Alice Springs’ CBD, and relocated many more than 8km away to Desert Park. They said it was because some events were too popular and had to be moved to where there was more space. But Chief Minister Michael Gunner admitted in the following week it was due to concerns around crime and public safety.
Other money for regional infrastructure
The Federal Government also promised $100 million for regional tourism infrastructure such as visitor centres, camping facilities, and walking and cycling trails across Australia but there were not details about how that would be distributed and over what time period.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack said there was another $100 million for other infrastructure for regional Australia.
“Getting more Australians travelling to places that are usually enjoyed by our international visitors will help to save the jobs and businesses of our fellow Australian,” Mr Birmingham said.
He has also released figure compiled in May with modelling by Tourism Research Australia which showed that spending on domestic tourism was forecast to fall in Australia by $23 billion compared to 2019, even if state and Territory borders had been open from the beginning of this financial year,
And the cost of the international travel ban would be $31 billion over the same period, assuming it did not lift until at least July 2021.
The modelling expects the domestic tourism industry value was expected to fall from $138 billion to $83 billion, without taking into account the internal border
Watch the deadwood public servants at TourismNT, who are responsible for the “CU in the NT” campaign and the embarrassing Lights In Water bottles disaster, hand the money straight to consultants as the deadwood have not had a creative thought in decades now!!