General News
14 January, 2026
Yanks loving tropical north
AMERICANS are loving the Far North despite the distance they must travel.
The United States is the region’s largest international source market growing by 9.2% to 94,000 visitors, pipping long-time favourite Japan, which fell 8.2% to 91,000.
Tropical North Queensland was the best performing region in the state after achieving record international spend and visitation generated by campaign activity delivered through the $15 million federal government tourism recovery program.
TTNQ chief executive officer Mark Olsen said international visitor numbers grew by 14.6% to 595,000 in the year to September 2025 from the previous year, driving a record spend of $1.1 billion, an 18.5% increase.
“The international visitor survey also showed that visitor nights jumped by 19.9% to 5.8 million, with the average length of stay growing by 0.4 to 9.7 nights and the average spend per visitor increasing by 3.4% to $1910,” he said.
Mr Olsen attributed some of the growth in the US market, as well as from Canada (up 18.2% to 21,000, growing the North America market by 10.7% to 115,000), to Fiji Airways flights.
“This growth was helped by the launch of Fiji Airways services in April 2025 which reduced the flight time to the US to just to 16 hours,” he said.
“The United Kingdom and New Zealand exceeded 2019 figures with 5.9% growth from the UK to 79,000 and a 48.3% jump from New Zealand to 40,000 on the back of Jetstar’s new direct flights to Christchurch launching in April 2025.
“China showed the largest growth of 62.6% to 43,000, helped by the return of seasonal services with Cathay Pacific, which continue for this Chinese New Year period. Asia grew by 17.7% to 194,000.
“Strong growth from the Netherlands of 32.7% to 16,000 helped to offset Germany falling by 18.7% to 29,000 and France decreasing by 21.6% to 13,000, resulting in continental Europe growing by 8.2% to 130,000.
“These results demonstrate the success of the $15 million federal government’s investment into the international tourism recovery program for our region which allowed TTNQ to undertake a record 110 international campaigns in 2024-25, delivering an extra 205,000 visitors to the region and supporting more than 1500 additional jobs in our communities.
“Our domestic figures have also shown growth in the nine months of record keeping under the new domestic tourism survey with Tropical North Queensland in the top 15 regions nationally for both total and holiday overnight visitor expenditure.
“Domestic expenditure is at $2.4 billion, giving TNQ 8.7% of Queensland’s market, with our $2.2 billion overnight visitor expenditure representing 10.6% of the market and the $191.6 million day trip expenditure at 2.9%.
“There were 1.39 million overnight visitors representing 7% of the state’s figures with 5.4 million nights (8%). The average length of stay was 4.1 nights, above the state average of 3.6 and the national average of 3.4.”
