Yesterday a post was made on the NewsMail Facebook page entitled Inside the run down island off Bundaberg. The article is written about islands hundreds of kilometres north of the region, and in no way refers to Bundaberg or any of our islands.
This post has highly offended our community and our tourism industry, and Bundaberg Tourism has contacted the News Mail to request this post be removed and a retraction be made. Update: shortly after this statement was published, the NewsMail deleted the post.
The Bundaberg region is proud to have two of Queensland’s greatest islands off our coastline, Lady Elliot Island and Lady Musgrave Island. Peter and Julie Gash of Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort, Brett Lakey of Lady Musgrave Experience and their entire teams have put many years of work into their island tourism offerings.
They are both internationally acclaimed and highly decorated with national and international awards, including taking out Gold and Bronze respectively in the Steve Irwin Award for Ecotourism in the 2022 Queensland Tourism Awards, with Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort competing at the Australian Tourism Awards next Friday night. Both are recognised in the state’s Best of Queensland Experience Program and are honored annually in TripAdvisor’s Travellers Choice awards, and both hold the highest level of Eco Certification and other accreditations through Ecotourism Australia.
The island experiences they offer are major drawcards for the tourists to the region, and the tourism industry is one of the largest contributors to the regional economy. Between 2017 and 2021, tourism has driven an estimated $3.5 billion into the regional economy according to research conducted by Austrade’s Tourism Research Australia.
Bundaberg Tourism condemns any news outlet who posts click bait to encourage high engagement at the expense of unrelated regional businesses.
