Cairns pins tourism recovery on new 'Come and Say G'day' campaign

Cairns tourism workers are banking on a high-stakes marketing gambit as Tourism Australia pivots away from social media to reclaim international visitors through a bold film campaign unveiled at an industry gathering in the region this week.

The strategy—featuring a nine-minute short film rather than TikTok-style content—aims to reverse the pandemic's damage to Queensland's tourism sector, where the stakes are particularly high. In Cairns, one in eight jobs are tourism-related, making the region especially vulnerable to fluctuating international visitor numbers.

At Cannes in Cairns, a three-day industry conference hosted by Travel Weekly's parent company The Misfits Media, Tourism Australia's Susan Coghill outlined the reasoning behind the unconventional approach. "Tourism is our second-largest export," Coghill told the marketing and advertising audience. "It's an industry made up of over 350,000 mostly small, mom-and-pop businesses that take out a second mortgage to buy boats to take you on a tour of the Murray River or up to the Great Barrier Reef."

For North Queensland's small tourism operators—from reef tour companies to rainforest lodges—the campaign's success is not a marketing matter but a survival question.

Rather than chasing trend cycles, Coghill and her team drew inspiration from Paul Hogan's 1984 "Wonders Down Under" campaign, mining its proven appeal while correcting for modern sensibilities. The original campaign relied on Australia's natural beauty and charming stereotypes to stand out—but it left Australia's First Nations peoples and multicultural communities invisible.

This time, the new "Come and Say G'day" campaign centres both iconic imagery and inclusive representation. Research over six months confirmed what Tourism Australia suspected: the world's fascination with kangaroos remains potent. But the campaign weaves in koalas, the Sydney Opera House, Uluru, and authentic Australian experiences—all underpinned by a commitment to feature the country as it truly is: diverse and welcoming.

For Cairns and broader North Queensland, the calculation is straightforward. With international tourism accounting for one in 12 jobs nationally, but climbing to one in eight in the region, the health of the sector determines the health of local economies. Small business owners who've mortgaged homes to fund reef tours, rainforest treks, and hospitality ventures are watching to see whether a single film can outperform the algorithmic fragmentation of short-form video.

Coghill's confidence rests partly on the campaign's proven track record—the film already carries award recognition—and partly on a philosophical shift: stepping back from constant newness to focus on clarity and authenticity. In a crowded global destination market, where TikTok content blurs into sameness, the calculated restraint of a single compelling narrative may be precisely what stands out.

For the thousands of tourism workers in Cairns and North Queensland whose livelihoods depend on overseas visitors, the coming months will reveal whether the strategy succeeds in drawing travellers more effectively than the decade of strategies that preceded it.