People's long weekend delivers a much need boost to hospitality and tourism businesses

Weekends are traditionally popular with locals and visitors, although we know that the added benefit of the long weekend generated much-needed overnight expenditure for Gold Coast’s visitor economy and a shot in the arm for tourism operators.

Across the board, the tourism sector welcomed the biggest increase in foot traffic, bookings and sales since July. We also saw Gold Coaster locals take up the opportunity to be tourists in their own city, which is an encouraging indicator for Gold Coast's visitor economy and road to recovery.

Tourism's recovery is a progressive journey and will no doubt be determined by key factors that influence travel confidence, which will continue to grow as restrictions are eased domestically.

The Gold Coast has seen gradual growth since July and we anticipate this upward trend to continue well into next year, although we know it will take some time before we see domestic visitation return to pre-COVID levels.

A more recent trend we’ve seen is an uptick in travellers booking last minute trips to the Gold Coast to take advantage of value-for-money deals.

Since the launch of DGC's $1.5 million Queensland-centric marketing campaign back in June, Gold Coast tourism has seen green shoots of a revival and we are cautiously optimistic that the campaign, in market until September, will stimulate further demand during the school holidays. Click here to view some executions of the campaign in action. 

With the September school holidays only a month away, we look forward to welcoming more families back to the region.

We know there is significant pent-up demand for travel to the Gold Coast and are looking forward to welcoming the rest of Australia back in the future.