Bonza flights bring boost to Tamworth businesses

The new route flies from Melbourne to Tamworth to the Sunshine Coast (AKA Maroochydore) Airport and back the same way every Tuesday and Friday.

"Melbourne is the second-largest economic centre in Australia, so now there's a direct link to large business opportunities, and we're finding quite a number of clients picking that up," Tamworth Business Chamber President Matthew Sweeney said.

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The full economic benefit from the new route is hard to estimate, but by making some assumptions we can get an idea of how many visitors the new flights could bring to the country music capital, he told the Leader.

The new service operates twice a week, bringing in passengers from both Melbourne and the Sunshine Coast.

Over a year, that's a total of 208 flights to Tamworth.

The plane operating this route, affectionately named 'Sheila' by its crew, has 186 seats, meaning there will be 38,688 Tamworth-bound seats on offer each year.

It's hard to know how many of those seats will be filled, but if we assume Bonza hits the current industry average of 75 per cent (as reported in January by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), that would mean 29,016 passengers could be inbound to the country music capital over the next year.

It's impossible to know how much money those potential passengers will spend, and some of them will likely be locals returning home, but even the most conservative estimates suggest these visitors will bring millions of dollars to the local economy.

But indirect benefits continue even outside of tourism, according to the business chamber.

"From a business perspective, Maroochydore is fast-becoming a centre for conferences," Mr Sweeney said.

He said the area is quickly becoming competitive with Sydney for event centres which host entrepreneurial conventions and he sees a lot of value for Bonza if local business owners take advantage of their direct route.

"I went up for one not that long ago, took me ages to get up there via Brisbane," he said.

He also said the connection to Melbourne will provide opportunities for Tamworth's professional industries (banking, finance, legal services, etc) to grow.

When asked if there might be any downsides, Mr Sweeney said he expected a small loss from local tourism as residents seek out the Sunshine Coast for holidays, but overall he says the number of tourists coming in should outweigh the number heading out.

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