South Australian tourism industry commences recovery

As the South Australian tourism industry begins to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, hotels in Adelaide are feeling confident to reopen and regional tourism operators are reporting their ‘best winter trade ever’.

Airlines are also boosting flights to and from Adelaide, creating vital jobs for South Australians.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall has advised that South Australia is seeing near record tourism traffic from states that are open to SA, in particular from New South Wales and adds “since we opened the borders to NSW a few weeks ago, traffic to southaustralia.com has been through the roof.

“In the past fourteen days, the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) has seen 99,000 visits to southaustralia.com from NSW - a 199% increase on the previous 14 days.

“In the week the borders opened, we set a new all-time record for NSW organic search traffic to the website, with the 12,000 organic search visits being more than three times the typical week, and almost double the previous record set in mid-September last year.

Premier Marshall also noted that “in addition to this, in the 36 hours immediately after the NSW border announcement, Qantas and Jetstar recorded 20,000 seat sales, and searches for SA on Expedia from NSW lifted 160%.

This online traffic has led to hotels reopening including The Hilton Adelaide Hotel which closed on 3rd April.

Premier Marshall noted that the Hilton now has “100 staff members back in action which will ramp up to 250 staff as demand increases.

“The opening of the NSW borders was just the news they have been waiting for – with around 37% of their domestic visitors coming from NSW.

“What is even more exciting to see is that accommodation occupancy in our regions are reaching almost the same levels as this time last year – and that’s without international visitors and only some interstate.

Premier Marshall is hopeful that the Great State Tourism voucher initiative will encourage more bookings.

Image courtesy of The Hilton Adelaide Hotel