Local governments across the state have thrown their support behind Cairns Regional Council's proposed visitor levy.
Councils represented at the Local Government Association of Queensland (LGAQ) Annual General Meeting have voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion seeking the State Government to amend legislation to allow a visitor levy to be put in place.
Mayor Bob Manning said a visitor levy would give regions financial autonomy to promote their destination to claw back market share that has been lost to rival domestic and international locations.
"I'm not surprised at the result," Cr Manning said. "It's just common sense that tourism destinations have the ability to raise their own funding and have control over how it is spent, rather than relying on State and Federal grants that can shrink dramatically depending on budget priorities.
"Our numbers show that a small, 2.5% levy per room per night, will generate $16 million annually to be spent attracting more visitors to Cairns.
"Raising the same amount from ratepayers is just not feasible. A user-pays visitor levy is a much fairer way to ensure our tourism industry can thrive, while residents benefit from the flow-on impact to our economy and jobs.
"Today's vote is an important step towards providing local governments with the choice to adopt a levy if it's right for their community."
Tourism Tropical North Queensland Chief Executive Officer Mark Olsen said TTNQ welcomed the support from local government for an increased investment in destination marketing.
"Cairns Mayor Bob Manning's proposal to raise $16 million for destination marketing is estimated to deliver an economic impact of $176 million to support close to 1000 new jobs and improve the liveability of Tropical North Queensland," Mr Olsen said.
"When you increase destination marketing, you get results, which is what we saw with the Federal Government's $10 million investment over the past two years.
"That $10 million allowed TTNQ to achieve $300 million in campaign-generated direct visitor expenditure by investing in targeted campaigns and working with our tourism and aviation partners.
"On the back of this investment, we achieved record domestic visitor expenditure of $3.12 billion in 2021-2022.
"Over the past two years our region has claimed the No.3 destination nationally in Google search trends for travel and this helped to propel growth in the destination's market share.
"Tropical North Queensland increased its market share in visitor nights and visitor spend within the State and was the only region to exceed our pre-COVID domestic visitor spend by more than $700 million.
"This success was a direct result of the increased funding. We need a sustainable long-term funding source to benefit the region into the future."
Earlier this year, the proposal was endorsed by a panel of industry leaders (the Tourism Industry Reference Panel) in a suite of recommendations to revitalise the sector.
The LGAQ will now commence discussions with the Queensland Government to determine the details of how a visitor levy would be introduced.
Council's position remains that local governments should have the choice, in consultation with their communities, whether to implement a levy, with all funds raised provided directly to destination tourism organisations.
