Tourism NT says the brief entry of collapsed low-cost carrier Bonza into the Northern Territory showed how affordable an outback holiday can be.
Speaking to travelBulletin at NT Muster last week, Tourism NT Executive Director, Tony Quarmby, said Bonza opened up the region to travel markets who believed it to be too expensive.
Over a few months, Bonza launched services between Melbourne and Alice Springs, as well as routes linking both the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast with Darwin.
“The great thing about Bonza is it proved that introducing a low-cost carrier doesn’t hijack passengers from existing carriers – it actually introduces new customers,” Quarmby told TB.
“So these are customers who felt the NT was out of their price range [who] could now look at the NT as an affordable destination – that’s what Bonza did.”
Quarmby stressed that these new travellers discovering the Northern Territory are “not your business market, not your high-end market.
“These are leisure consumers who are legitimately there to holiday in a place they thought was out of their price range, which it’s not – when you get an affordable airfare, it is an affordable destination.”
The Tourism NT boss added that outside peak months of Jun, Jul and Aug, shoulder seasons see prices drop dramatically, and by booking ahead and packaging, the NT is just as affordable as anywhere in Australia.
From affordability to luxury and beyond, Quarmby added that Darwin is currently enjoying a boom in high-end travellers on the back of luxury cruise lines deploying larger and newer ships to the Kimberley region.
“[These travellers] are the ones getting off, getting out and doing more tours and more experiences in the Top End,” the Tourism NT boss said.
“But they’re also doing a lot of the shopping, the restaurants, getting out and doing the tourism around Darwin, so it’s benefiting everybody from the Territory in terms of hospitality and tourism.”
Quarmby added Darwin has benefited from some great international media coverage stemming from major events such as Seabourn homeporting its newest ship Seabourn Pursuit in the NT capital.
“We’ve already seen some of the big ships arriving in our peak months, which usually is the summer months for cruising.
“We’ve seen them throughout the peak months, which has been terrific,” Quarmby said.
