January 24, 2022 | By Bronwen Largier
The Sunshine Coast has taken first place in a global list measuring tourism sentiment, with the top 100 most loved traveller destinations including four Queensland regions in the top 10 and 30 overall from Australia.
The top 100 destinations list was determined through analysis of 1.6 billion publicly available online conversations and content pieces in 16 languages, covering 21,330 destinations. The company conducting the year-round monitoring of tourism sentiment, partly through artificial intelligence, is Canadian-based company Think! X Innovations Inc.
Visit Sunshine Coast CEO Matt Stoeckel called the Sunshine Coast’s placement at the top of the list “incredible news”.
“The Tourism Sentiment Index is a measure of a destination’s ability to generate positive word of mouth about its tourism offering, and our number one status reflects how well the Sunshine Coast is delivering on its visitor experience,” he said.
“It’s a huge endorsement of the Sunshine Coast as a premium tourist destination.
“With international borders set to open, the fact that the Sunshine Coast resonates so strongly overseas highlights the potential we have to regrow our visitor numbers.
“We have been using the last year to emphasise the Sunshine Coast’s nature-based experiences, along with our food, health and wellness assets, and this survey shows that our messages have really struck a chord with potential travellers.”
The other Queensland locations in the top 10 were the Whitsundays, at number two, Noosa ranked fifth and Cairns, ranked ninth. Port Douglas, Broome and Gippsland were all inside the top 20, while several of South Australia’s wine regions made the top 100, as well as other destinations in New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria.
Australia’s Federal Government has yet to set out a plan for a full scale opening of Australia’s international border.