Queensland looking to Indy 300

By GREG ANSLEY on the Gold Coast


To a middle-aged journalist, being strapped into the bare metal interior of Steve Ellery's vicious-looking Ford V8 feels something like staring down the business end of a missile.

But to the Gold Coast, struggling to pull its economy out of a terrorism- and Sars-inflicted trough, the roar of Ellery's five-litre fuel-injected monster as it rips along the straight at 240km/h is pure music.

Ellery, one of the surprisingly normal and mild-mannered drivers who challenge one another at breakneck speed and hairsbreadth distance on the Gillette V8 Supercar circuit, will be competing in his home town in October.

For only the second year, the V8s will join the Lexmark Indy 300 Champ cars - purebreds with a top speed of about 380km/h - in the annual carnival that creates the fastest street circuit in the world out of an island of high-rises.

All this could be dismissed as rev-head paradise but for the massive amounts of money it will inject into the Queensland economy at a time when tourism has been grinding along in second gear.

The state - and even more so the tourism-dependent Gold Coast - is only now starting to emerge from a nationwide slump that saw international arrivals in Australia plummet by 21 per cent in May.

The latest figures, for June, show a 7 per cent month-on-month recovery, but are still running at 32,000 fewer foreign visitors than in the corresponding period last year.

Alarmed at what it described as one of the worst troughs ever, the Australian Tourism Commission in May launched a A$33 million campaign in 10 major markets to entice holidaymakers back.

So far the results have been mixed: bookings from New Zealand, the United States and Europe have improved markedly, but there has been little relief in Asia, where visitor numbers have declined by up to 20 per cent overall, and by 75 per cent in China and 47 per cent in Singapore.

On the Gold Coast, the high-yield conference market has suffered significantly, as have the 25 per cent or so of hotels and resorts that cater mainly for international tourists.

Although domestic holidaymakers have staved off a far worse collapse, the pain has been felt across the economy and pushed businesses into survival tactics.

Limousine operator Corporate Limousines, for example, has been propping up its bottom line with a A$30 ($33) package that takes visitors - a large proportion from New Zealand - from Brisbane to the Coast by rail, and from railway station to resort by limo.

There are signs that the worst may be passing with the officially-declared end to the Sars epidemic and a more benign view of Australia in terrorist-conscious northern markets.

Japan Airlines has reported that bookings for travel to the Oceania region, including Australia and New Zealand, improved for July and August while travel to all other regions continued to decline.

On the Gold Coast, hotel, bus and limousine services report the beginnings of a recovery, but are also watching with concern the furious battle being waged between rival states for still-lean tourism pickings.

This has been reflected in airfare and resort packages from Auckland to the Gold Coast for as little as $499, in advertising campaigns within Australia for domestic travellers and campaigns built on events such as the Rugby World Cup in Sydney.

The Gold Coast is pinning a great deal on the Lexmark Indy 300 on October 23-26, hoping at the same time to bleed business out of the World Cup and from the All Blacks' game against Tonga in Brisbane on the Friday night of the race.

Wrapped in an entire carnival heavy on partying and bare flesh, promoter Gold Coast Motor Events Co - half-owned by the state Government - is forecasting ticket sales of more than 300,000.

The Government estimates the event generates more than 175,000 visitor nights and 700 jobs, pumping more than A$52 million ($58 million) into the Queensland economy.

* The number of tourists arriving in Australia rose 11 per cent in July from June. The number of overseas visitors rose to 400,700 from 358,000 in June, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported. The figures are provisional. From a year earlier, arrivals fell 0.4 per cent.

"The worst is over for tourism," said Geoff Kendrick, an economist at Westpac Banking in Sydney.

International visitors spend A$17.1 billion ($19 billion) in Australia a year, representing 11.2 per cent of exports.

* Greg Ansley was flown to the Gold Coast by the Gold Coast Tourism Bureau.