00:01The town of Airlie Beach has been built on tourism really since the 1970s and in the past few decades
00:07cruising has become a really important part of that.
00:09Just to give you a sense of how important tourism really is to this part of the world, one in
00:13three people are actually directly employed by tourism here in the Airlie Beach and Cannonvale area.
00:19Now in the past few years in particular the amount of cruising coming to the Whitsundays has really ramped up
00:24at the moment for the 2026 season.
00:2590 ships are expected to actually come into the Port of Airlie at some point during the season.
00:30Some of them carrying almost 5,000 passengers each and that's really put the pressure on a lot of the
00:35public amenities and put the local government on a notice.
00:39They're thinking what are these people going to be doing, where are they doing here and are there enough public
00:43amenities to really service them.
00:45The Airlie Beach Lagoon behind me has recorded a 100% increase in visitation in just the past two years
00:51alone and that has pushed the local council to invest in public amenities.
00:55But it's also pushed the region more broadly to think about what other options are there to ensure that the
01:01love of tourism, the economic benefit is being evenly spread.
01:04There has been a push to ensure that visitors are visiting not just here at Airlie Beach, which is quite
01:09a contained area.
01:09It's got the main street here and then the foreshore and then the island visitation that Airlie Beach allows people
01:16to get into.
01:16But beyond that, we've got the small agricultural town of Proserpine, just 20, 30 k's down the road.
01:21And then about an hour's drive north, the coastal town of Bowen, even further west, the local council has been
01:28pushing to get people to experience the mining heritage of the small town of Collinsville.
01:33It is the start of the cruising season here in North Queensland.
01:36It is interesting to note that Carnival, which is one of the key cruise lines that come into this part
01:41of the world,
01:42they've announced that the Luminosa and Adventure are actually leaving Australia if they can't get an agreement with the Australian
01:47government on the type of staffing arrangements that they want.
01:49They have confirmed that the Carnival and the Encounter will be staying in Australian waters sailing from Sydney and Brisbane
01:56respectively.
01:56Now, the local Chamber of Commerce here in the Whitsunday says that the cruising industry overall contributes about $71 million
02:03annually to the broader Whitsunday economy.
02:06And they've said then, and have argued even, that even if that reduces, the town does have a diversified tourism
02:11structure.
02:12They've got the on-water excursions and all the visitation that the islands bring to this part of the world.
02:16They've got drive tourism, which is an increasing section of their economy.
02:20People are either doing the lap right across Australia or just doing the Bruce Highway up and down North Queensland
02:25and into Central and Southern Queensland as well.
02:27They've also been really pushing to get visitation rising through the two airports,
02:32both the Hamilton Island Airport and the Proserpine Airport, which is about 30 or 40km to the west of us.
02:37The
