00:00 It's the bucket list destination for travellers around the world, but there's thousands who
00:07 haven't ticked off a visit to Uluru this year.
00:10 We're certainly seeing some significant decreases compared to pre-COVID.
00:16 New data from Parks Australia shows a slow year so far for Uluru-Katajuta National Park
00:22 compared with pre-pandemic and a boom in the lead up to the closure of the Uluru climb.
00:28 We had a good year last year.
00:30 We have had a number of years of COVID and of course the impacts and challenges that
00:34 we've had to deal with this year.
00:36 Our industry is still very fragile.
00:39 That impact blamed on the slow return of international tourists and on the costs and cuts to Qantas
00:45 and Jetstar flights.
00:48 Tourism operators telling the ABC there's currently less than half the flights into
00:52 Uluru than pre-pandemic.
00:54 We're always keen to remind our national airline that the NT in Qantas stands for the Northern
00:59 Territory and so we're hopeful that with the change of leadership at our national airline
01:07 that we hopefully might see better days ahead.
01:11 We'll say to our national carriers that you must be travelling to the Northern Territory.
01:17 We want to see more flights, we want to see better prices, we want to make sure Territorians
01:21 get the services that they deserve.
01:24 The Minister also making this appeal to domestic travellers.
01:28 There's also a social responsibility here for all Australians to make sure that they
01:32 are travelling to the Northern Territory.
01:34 I think Australians want to travel all over Australia but they need to be given a reason
01:39 to come here and that is for a great experience.
01:43 In a statement Qantas said it remained committed to Uluru and the Northern Territory and would
01:48 resume daily flights from far north Queensland to the region from March next year.
01:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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