Tiger flights chop out of the blue

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By ERWIN CHLANDA
 
The announcement that Tiger flights to Alice Springs will cease again came out of the blue, and follows Tourism NT spending about $700,000 in the past 12 months promoting holidays in Central Australia with Tigerair.
 
The NT Government’s Tourism NT says: “Tigerair gave [us] no indication of this happening before Friday afternoon.
 
“Tourism NT is in regular contact with all its airline partners on marketing campaigns and was given no inkling that anything was amiss regarding Tigerair services to Alice.”
 
Apart form the $700,000 campaign Tigerair “would have also benefitted from other Tourism NT activity.  There was also significant digital activity, PR and social media with Tigerair, as we do with other airlines,” says Tourism NT.
 
It says it’s too early to know how many hotel and tour bookings will be lost as a result of the flights being canceled: “Tigerair chose July 22 as the date to withdraw its services in order to give passengers adequate lead time to make other arrangements.
 
“Tourism NT will be able to monitor any impact resulting from [Tiger’s] withdrawal via its regular industry sentiment polling.”

5 COMMENTS

  1. Another area where this Government has lost its way and refused to look around at what our domestic market is doing.
    Examples: I recently counted five buses and around 100 people clambering over the welcome rock south of town, which is the obvious place for a brand new advertisement of everything we have to offer in the form of a visitors centre.
    Two years ago on nationwide Sunday morning ABC, they polled travellers on what they want in a visitors centre – clean toilets and plenty of parking for buses and caravans. So what do we do? Put ours in the centre of town so caravans can get parking stickers. (Yes, I saw it a few weeks ago.)
    Both McLaren Vale and Mt Isa got it right and Daintree followed. That whole area where the subdivision is should have been a prominent display of what can be done here to attract investment and permanent economic base for the district, but the area was hijacked by real estate interests.
    Japan has a school marathon relay over 100 km in stages of 10 km and attracts a TV audience of 80 million viewers.
    Free a advertising but ignored. I threw the concept around amongst the tourism bodies here and got no response. They refuse to look at what is happening around them.
    Just yesterday there were over 50 visitors being photographed at that rock and I wondered how many of them made it to the visitors centre in town? My guess is very few.

  2. Central Australian Tourism needs a Budget Airline to survive – as do many local businesses. Perhaps an International Airline link via Asia – Darwin – Alice with Brisbane Sydney Melbourne connections? Come on NT Tourism – you have the clout to arrange a deal.

  3. I’m not sure we need a budget airline back again, $109 flights just haven’t been sustainable. Hopefully we’ll see Virgin pick up the hole in the market with flights priced around the $160 mark, still significantly cheaper than Qantas Red e-‘deal’ prices of $295 ASP-SYD and $226 ASP-ADL but profitable enough to make it a sustainable service.

  4. I find it disappointing news that Tiger Airlines have chopped flights to Alice Springs. Did they ever consider maybe reducing flights to one a week? This now leaves Qantas to charge what they like.
    I have a daughter and grandchildren living in Alice and I would have liked to have visited every three months.
    Now that Tiger has cancelled flights to Alice I cannot afford to pay Qantas fares every three months to stay in touch with my family.

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