Queensland tourism capital of Australia, with regional areas leading the way

New data from Tourism Research Australia shows the state received a $17.8 billion injection from more than 20 million domestic travellers in the 12 months leading up to March this year.

Visitor expenditure was up by 56 per cent on the previous year and more than 7 per cent higher than before Covid-19.

That's compared to NSW's total of $16.7 billion and Victoria's $10.6 billion.

However, NSW did receive four million more visitors than Queensland for that period, while Victoria sat at 18 million.

Regional areas accounted for the majority of Queensland's windfall at $11.3 billion from 13 million people, while Brisbane saw $3.4 billion from five million travellers and the Gold Coast $3.1 billion from three million people.

Inland, Southern Queensland Country showed $808 million in domestic visitor spending from 2.1 million travellers, while Outback Queensland benefited from $569 million from 868,000 travellers.

In the Goondiwindi Region, Mayor Lawrence Springborg said their tourism industry was back on the road, with a recent revival of coach tour operators visiting or overnighting in the region a welcome relief for many businesses after the impacts of COVID-19.

"It's great to see that bus tours are back, and bringing with them lots of visitors who are ready and raring to explore what our region has to offer," Mr Springborg said.

Mr Springborg said although the past few years had doubtlessly been difficult for many local businesses associated with tourism, the future was once again looking bright for the industry.

"The Goondiwindi Region is back in full swing and ready to welcome visitors with a packed events calendar over the next few months especially," he said.

Coolmunda Organic Olives manager Katie Baker said they were seeing a wider demographic of people interested in touring the regions and their 9000-tree grove.

"We've always had bus tours and they're generally older groups from Brisbane, Toowoomba, Warwick, but just in the last six months, we've had family groups coming through. We hadn't had many random family drop-ins like that in the past," Ms Baker said.

Ms Baker and her parents, who own the grove, have been working hard to expand into an eco tourism destination.

"We're trying to make it more of an educational and meditative type experience - not only about olives."

The trio have been building up their sclerophyll arboretum - a forest of a variety of typically Australian vegetation type plants with hard, short and often spiky leaves.

"We've planted in excess of 10,000 trees in that area and the idea is that people wander our area and see the native Aussie bush.

"We've also got a huge bird area around Coolmunda, so we get quite a few bird watchers out here as well."

Coolmunda Organic Olives has created a local 'Coolmunda trail' to encourage visitors to explore other attractions in the area, including the Greenup Meeting Place, Coolmunda Caravan Park, Lady of the Lake boutique, the Leven K Lavender Farm, and the Inglewood Heritage Centre and Australian Tobacco Museum.

However, more work is still on the cards.

"We need to do more work in this area. Obviously the word of mouth and comments on social media assist as well," Ms Baker said.

Other local businesses have reported a similar upswing in recent domestic tourism, such as the Texas Rabbit Works, which recently had 43 Ulysses Club members through its doors in one day as part of a group trip.

Read more