Drive tourism

Queensland's drive tourism market consists of visitors who travel for leisure and use a vehicle to reach their destination. This includes both day trips and overnight trips to one or more locations.

Benefits of drive tourism to rural and regional businesses

Drive tourism is important for Queensland as it encourages visitors to travel beyond the major tourism destinations, stopover in small towns and spend money at local businesses.

Businesses in rural and regional communities rely on this income, as visitors often spend money on local tourism products and services, and buy basic travel necessities like fuel, food and other supplies.

Drive tourism provides a number of benefits to businesses, including:

  • increased profits
  • job growth
  • opportunities for new business start-up
  • increased demand for new products and services
  • opportunities for business collaboration
  • addressing skills shortages by tapping into the skills of temporary visitors.

Key measures of success for Queensland's drive tourism market include the number of tourists embarking on self-drive journeys, the length of their journeys, time spend in particular places, and the amount of money they spend.

Queensland self-drive routes

Queensland has a number of popular self-drive routes. These routes encourage tourists to explore multiple places, often stopping along the way to sample products, experiences, and services from local businesses.

Some of Queensland's most popular self-drive routes include:

Opportunities in drive tourism

The drive tourism market in expected to continue growing, creating ongoing opportunities for communities and tourism businesses across Queensland.

There are a number of opportunities for Queensland businesses to grow from drive tourism. There are many strategies businesses can use to attract drive tourists to their town and build on existing drive tourism markets in their region. These include:

  • creating unique, memorable, and high-quality products, services or experiences
  • strong online presence and targeted advertising and marketing
  • working with regional tourism organisations
  • collaborating with local businesses and tourism operators
  • lobbying local government for improved tourism amenities and services.

Offering unique products, services and experiences

In a state as large as Queensland, drive tourists have access to many journeys and experiences. Promoting unique tourism products, services and experiences will encourage tourists to stopover in your town and contribute to your business. Without something that sets your business apart from others that gives tourists a reason to stop, potential visitors may bypass you altogether.

Learn more about experience design and development to create unique products and services.

Applying for tourism signage

You can apply for the installation of a tourist sign for commercial tourist attractions and service signs on state-controlled roads if you meet certain requirements.

The streamlined assessment process and administrative arrangements are designed to improve road safety and improve the quality and consistency of tourist signs throughout Queensland.

Learn more about applying for a tourist or service sign.

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