The month in review: Cairns
By Herron Todd White
April, 2010
Cairns and the Tropical North Queensland region, with
its icons of the Daintree Rainforest and the Great Barrier
Reef, is in reality one big holiday location, visited by more
than two million domestic and international tourists
annually year. Most of these are holiday makers but some
also come for business reasons or to study.
For this reason, just about every house in the entire Far
North Queensland region can be regarded as a holiday
house, which either caters directly to a holiday maker, or
contains people whose livelihoods depend on tourism.
The Cairns tourism industry has done it tough during the
course of the GFC, but is looking forward to a brighter
2010 as extra domestic and international airline flights
kick in during March and April. According to local tourism
experts, the extra flights are expected to bring an extra
$100 million of tourism business into the region every
year.
In locations such as the Port Douglas, Palm Cove and the
Cairns CBD there is a large base of holiday apartment
developments that have catered primarily to out-of-town
buyers purchasing for lifestyle reasons (the ‘lock-andleave’ market) as well as investors. Buyers in these markets
most recently have been typically drawn from the Sydney,
Melbourne, WA and expatriate markets.
In the prime holiday locations, a good tourist season
and a good property season go hand in hand. However
with demand abating over the past few years, as tourism
growth has dipped and investor activity quietened,
holiday apartments have suffered from an over-supply of stock. Prices in the more recent developments have been
reduced in some instances by up to 30% from peak price
levels. We believe that prices have now stabilised and
activity, whilst still slow, will rebuild as tourism numbers
recover and lifestyle purchases and investor activity from
southern buyers resumes.
There are a number of ‘secret’ holiday locations in the Far
North Queensland region, to which locals retreat away
from the tourism mainstream. However these locations
are too secret to reveal in a national publication!
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