Cairns expects to have a direct air link with Singapore by 2015, with strengthening existing international air links also on its tourism body's agenda.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Rob Giason told Travel Today establishing a Singapore route is “really the focus” for the tourism body, with strong links with other parts of Asia already in place.
“It’s really important we have some direct connectivity with Singapore and we’re in ongoing talks with a range of airlines, to understand their program for growth and development and ensure we are in that mix,” he said.
Giason also identified growing frequencies on New Zealand routes as a priority, in addition to building Japanese services back up as the market continues to recover.
“The decline for Cairns was pretty catastrophic, we had double dailies from Narita, we had Australian airlines servicing Nagoya and also Osaka,” he said.
“So obviously when we lost a lot of capacity in 2009, we saw an immediate downturn.”
The Japanese market now accounts for around 100,000 people annually, down from 260,000 in 2005. However, solid growth of 12% was seen last year.
The destination hopes to see Japanese numbers recover to 200,000 by 2015.
But Giason highlighted considerable competition for the destination from the likes of Hawaii, Guam and Bali which he highlighed as having good flight frequencies and connections.
“Cairns is a mono destination for the Japanese market so we’re not competing against other Australian destinations,” he said.
Around 65% of visitation to Cairns is not in combination with a visit to any other destination, he added.
Jetstar will increase its four weekly flights from Osaka to daily flights between from 13 July to 1 September this year with TTNQ also partnering with Tourism and Events Queensland and Jetstar on a marketing campaign to target Japanese travellers.
