Travel hotspots such as Far North Queensland, Uluru and the NSW south coast have been flooded with domestic tourists keen to explore the nation - but it s taken a toll on tourism operators.
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It’s the visionaries behind headline events, openings – and even slogans – who keep us coming back time again. Here are three great reasons to get moving around Australia and New Zealand.
Move over MoMA, GoCA is here
Australia’s vast Central Desert (measuring 283,000 square kilometres) might be small on population but it’s large on talent. Home to about 4300 full-time residents, it takes in some of Australia’s most notable Indigenous art communities, including Papunya, Lajamanu, Utopia, Ernabella, Hermannsburg, Yuendumu and Kintore. The best art out of the region is breathtaking, and sought after by collectors around the world.
Hotels in some of the country s most popular destinations are reporting no vacancies for the next three weeks as holidaymakers race to snap up half-price airfares, smashing pandemic travel records. There s just nothing available; we re fully booked till the end of the holidays, said Tracey Harris of the Caloundra Holiday Centre on the Sunshine Coast.
See Also After that, there s some availability, but things are being booked really fast, so you have to get in quick. I think prices have risen by about 10 per cent because of demand.
On the Gold Coast, many hotels says they only have a few vacancies left in the coming weeks, while bookings platform Wotif.com saw accommodation searches for the destinations in the cut-price airfare bonanza soar by 55 per cent, and advise travellers, if they can, to avoid long weekends and the winter school holidays.
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More than 100,000 of the federal government’s 800,000 discounted airfares to 15 regional destinations including Cairns, Hobart and Darwin sold before midday on Thursday, with one-way fares starting at about $55.
Despite the strong start to the aviation stimulus package, industry leaders continued to decry the absence of hard-hit Sydney and Melbourne on the destination list, as well as the end of JobKeeper for an industry that employs more than 660,000 people.
Deserted now, but not for much longer. Hard-hit Cairns sold well during the first 11 hours of the big 50 per cent off regional airfare sale.
Brian Cassey
There are also fears that consumers could struggle to find reasonably priced accommodation with the sudden rush on Queensland destinations such as Cairns, Maroochydore, the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast.
Business by Jeremy Pierce
Premium Content  Tourism bosses fear losing an entire generation of experience as workers desert the industry for better job security. The giant strides made in recent years to convince school leavers that tourism is a genuine career path are at risk of being wiped out as skilled workers ranging from dive masters to marine engineers contemplate career changes with the looming end of the JobKeeper program. Tourism traditionally accounts for one in nine Queensland jobs and already, thousands of skilled tourism workers have been lost to the industry, with predictions that up to 25,000 more could lose their jobs in the fallout from the end of the JobKeeper program.