Business
22 September, 2025
Financial headwinds
THE Far North’s peak tourism body is facing funding headwinds despite celebrating 50 years of marketing the region and a record year in visitor numbers and spending.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Mark Olsen said a lack of money to continue the momentum was “the greatest challenge” over the next 12 to 24 months for the organisation.
He said TTNQ appreciated the $15 million international tourism recovery program grant from the federal government which led to an extra 200,000 international visitors as well as $3m to market the Great Barrier Reef.
But Mr Olsen said TTNQ would now have to search for more marketing dollars on top of their usual incomes streams to ensure the recovery kept pace.
Last year a record $30.5m was spent by TTNQ. Cairns Regional Council gave $3.4m, matched by $16.8m from industry and $9.6m from the state and federal governments, for a total income of $29.9m.
Last year TTNQ made an operating loss of $676,739 after it was decided to draw down some of the organisation’s retained earnings from the past five years to run additional domestic campaign activity with $750,000 as well as operational savings of $73,261.
“Over the coming three years the TTNQ budget is forecast to drop to less than one-third of the 2024-25 budget, making the challenge of maintaining market share that much more challenging,” the annual report said.
“Alternative forms of sustainable funding are needed for TTNQ to continue to deliver the record return on investment the organisation has delivered in campaign-generated overnight visitor spend at $283m and advertising value equivalent at $275m, equating to at least 18:1 return on investment.”
More than 2.1 million domestic travellers visited the region in the year to March 2025, spending $3.4 billion, while 557,000 international tourists spent $1.1bn, which was back to 2019 levels before COVID hit.
Cairns Airport recorded nearly five million passenger movements in 2024-25, including 335,652 from overseas, with seat capacity exceeding 80%, up from 68%.
Mr Olsen said of the extra 205,000 visitors who came to the region, two-thirds were international.
“Since the borders reopened, international visitor spend in Tropical North Queensland has rebounded to nearly $1.1 billion, on par with 2019 expenditure, powered by the strong partnership of the tourism industry, TTNQ and Cairns Airport,” he said.
“International visitor expenditure now supports nearly one-quarter of the one-in-six jobs in our community that depend on tourism. This excellent result occurred despite TTNQ facing challenging times over the past 12 months from the growth of overseas travel by Australians and the slower recovery of markets like China.”
Mr Olsen said Europe was an important market as they stayed longer, Japan was recovering well, US was good and there was excellent growth from New Zealand.
The US market was expected to grow as the Fiji Airways flights gathered pace through direct flights to Nadi Airport and then on to North America, he said.
Mr Olsen described the UK source as “stable”, China was slowly coming back while a real surprise was India, via Singapore Airlines.
Mr Olsen said as airlines invested in narrow bodied and fuel efficient aircraft, the region was in the box seat to capture travellers from Korea, south-east Asia and grow the Japanese, Indian and Chinese markets.
