THESE are exciting times for Cairns and Tropical North Queensland and Cairns Airport is proud to play its part.

New links for the tourism industry are opening up through direct services from mainland China, business tourism is growing and sports tourism continues to gain ground through major events such as the Cairns Airport Adventure Festival, regular AFL and rugby fixtures and other national and international calendar additions.

Tourism remains the region's most important industry. It has weathered some tough times over recent years and yet again shown its resilience.

No matter what sector you are involved in, everyone living in Tropical North Queensland benefits from a strong tourism industry.

If we want to continue to enjoy these benefits we must all work to ensure we offer an attractive, safe destination for our visitors and contribute to its promotion.

This broad approach is successfully applied in areas such as the Gold Coast, which has destination marketing funds some five times higher than ours.

That converts to a lot of buying power!

Imagine how much Tropical North Queensland could build on its current level of success with such an injection of funds.

With a strengthening tourism industry underpinning our region, there are also opportunities to revitalise and diversify our economy.

These will only be realised through a determined commitment from government, backed by significant private, institutional and foreign investment.

A $1 billion redevelopment of Cairns Airport proposed over the next 20 years will ensure it continues to evolve as Australia's Gateway to the Asia Pacific region and provide the infrastructure vital for regional development.

This ensures that both aeronautical and non-aeronautical on-airport developments can continue to provide an economic multiplier, providing direct regional and state impacts to the Gross Regional and State Product, socio-economic benefits, diversification of regional economy, employment, population demographics and urban growth.

The airport owners are prepared to make a major financial and asset investment to ensure these opportunities for our region are realised and to offset the ever-increasing competition from tourism and leisure-based destinations in a global market.

We will continue to work with all levels of government, business, industry and the community to achieve our vision and look forward to sharing the benefits with our region and the future generations living in this unique part of the world. tag Comments on the Cairns Way Ahead campaign can be sent via email to damon.guppy@news.com.au or posted on www.cairns.com.au tag Tomorrow: Cairns Young Chamber business leader Jean Hunt

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