WATCH: Feb. 18, 2022 Whitsunday Weekly E-News

Hi, I'm Annette Neil from PRD Whitsunday.

Exciting news this week here in the Whitsundays with Bonza Airlines announcing that they're going to launch a business.
To begin with, they are a start up airline, and are going to be flying in and out of the Whitsundays, the Sunshine Coast and Newcastle.
A couple of flights a week to get them started.
This sounds amazing to us here, and we can't wait to welcome all the visitors from those areas or potentially for locals to transit to those locations more easily.
We're looking forward to seeing what happens when they launch to the media.

Now, stats on January for visitors to our region. We saw occupancy levels at 73%, which is the highest we've seen in three years, so not surprising, given the COVID-19 pandemic over the last two years.
It was up by eight per cent in December.

School holidays are having a significant impact and the extension of them, as well as kids not going back to school, perhaps people came to visit for a little longer period due to this.

We are seeing firm holiday forward bookings for properties here in the Whitsundays, notably $500 a night and above in that category.
The holiday home average length of stay, sitting at 4.8 days long weekends which are the most popular times of the week for people to come here. In January, the most popular locations for people travelling from were Mackay, Townsville, and Brisbane.No surprises still within Queensland.

People are still a little bit cautious and worried about border closures, but I think we will see a lot more interstate visitors coming to visit us.

Come and visit us and come and enjoy Shingley beach. You can see where I am today over behind me. It’s a beautiful spot.

Shingley beach is within the Coral Sea Marina. Come visit us.