Hotels in the heart of the city are feeling the confidence to reopen and tourism operators in our regions are reporting their ‘best winter trade ever’ as South Australian tourism recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Airlines are also boosting flights to and from Adelaide, creating vital jobs for South Australians.
Premier Steven Marshall said today that South Australia is seeing near record tourism traffic from states that are open to us – in particular from New South Wales.
“Since we opened the borders to NSW a few weeks ago, traffic to southaustralia.com has been through the roof,” Premier Marshall said.
“In the past fourteen days, the 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.
“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 kind of traffic has led to hotels, such as The Hilton Adelaide Hotel to come out of hibernation and re-open.
“The Hilton hotel closed on April 3 this year and I’m delighted to be here today to announce they are now open again,” Premier Marshall said.
“The Hilton have 100 staff members back in action today, 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.
“Some operators in the regions are reporting their ‘best winter trade ever’ and Adelaide hotels are also showing very positive green shoots.
“With the launch of the Great State voucher initiative this week, we can only hope bookings will kick off even more.
“My government is backing our tourism sector unreservedly, particularly with our recent announcements of a $20 million fund to boost infrastructure and experiences for regional tourism and our Great State Tourism Voucher campaign.”
