Alice Springs tourism operators celebrate funding after toughest days

Central Australian tourism funding injection celebrated after several challenging years Mon 6 Jul 2026 at 6:23pm In short: Tourism Central Australia has launched a marketing campaign that will pay for a flight to Alice Springs for Australian travellers when they book a travel experience. Tourism operators sharing in a $2.5 million grant fund have also announced, to help finance new ideas for tourism experiences. What's next? It is hoped the $7.5 million boost tourism in Central Australia will help the industry rebuild following a difficult few years. A quiet area in the Olive Pink Botanic Garden in Alice Springs, with native quandong trees, mulgas and acacia bushes surrounding a shelter with a corrugated iron roof, will soon be home to an Indigenous Tourism Hub thanks to a federally funded grant. The botanic garden is one of 17 local tourism operators sharing in $2.5 million to create new tourism experiences in the red centre, with recipients announced today. "It's really exciting … We're in such a great position to support Indigenous tourism business," the garden's general manager, Samantha Hussey, said. Other tourism ventures include a bus tour visiting culturally significant sites in Mparntwe/Alice Springs, as well as e-bike touring. Ms Hussey said various First Nations tourism operators had already been running in the park, including cultural bird and plant walks, painting and Indigenous food workshops, but now there would be a dedicated space designed with their Indigenous partners. "Bring it all together, bring some booking systems together and really let people know that this is a great place to come and experience Indigenous culture in Alice Springs,"she said. The funding injection forms part of a 2025 federal election promise of $8.5 million to boost tourism in central Australia, with $1 million already spent on helping tourism businesses with operational costs. The funding is also going towards a new Tourism Central Australia (TCA) initiative, Fly Free to Alice, also launched today, which will cover the cost of a flight to Alice Springs. TCA chief executive Danial Rochford said no other region in Australia was taking the same step to encourage interstate visitors and said he hoped the flight campaign would bring at least 1,000 tourists to town. He said it was also about encouraging tourists to travel further than Uluru, given how much cheaper it was to fly to Yulara airport to visit the iconic rock. "This campaign is 'Fly free to Alice Springs', it's not 'Fly free to Central Australia' … you can fly out of Uluru, but it is very purposely designed to give people the opportunity to fly directly to Alice Springs," he said. "Two nights in accommodation here in Alice Springs [and] experiences and attractions are part of the package and you must have that." The flight period covers from January until August next year, to include the region's usually quiet summer period. Just last month, Qantas axed direct flights between Alice Springs and Melbourne, which Mr Rochford said was devastating for tourism. He said the industry and the region had to "face down [their] toughest days" over the past six years, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the perception of crime in the outback town, and the impacts of fuel shortages. "Now more than ever, this funding is so important for us to turn our region and our industry's fortunes around,"Mr Rochford said. Marion Scrymgour, the ALP member for Lingiari, said the federal government made the election commitment to build the resilience of the region. "It's really important that we do build the economy, it's not just about mining operations and putting funding in critical minerals," she said. "I think it's about looking at small operators operating in our regions."