Bolstered by a pandemic population boom and pent-up demand for beach holidays, the destination is also expected to outperform when international travel takes off, luring airlines flying out of Asia that would normally have opted for routes to Sydney, Melbourne or even Brisbane.

Outgoing Queensland Airports boss Chris Mills said he expected domestic traveller numbers to Australia’s favourite holiday destination to continue to climb and believed the airport was well positioned to secure new international routes as well.

“We are currently sitting at 70 per cent of pre-Covid levels. We anticipate we’d be above 100 per cent by Easter,” Mills said.

“That’s a very steep climb back up to 70 per cent and then 100 per cent from where we were, there were times when we were running at one per cent of pre-Covid levels.”

More than 300,000 passengers were welcomed and farewelled at Gold Coast Airport in February, which was about 68 per cent of pre-Covid-19 capacity. In April 2020, at the height of the pandemic, just 1,519 passengers went through the airport.

Mills, who will be leaving as chief of the Queensland Airports stable of Gold Coast, Townsville, Mount Isa and Longreach on 30 June, said domestic traveller numbers to Queensland were currently driving the recovery, particularly out of Melbourne.

But Mills said the re-opening of direct flights to Singapore, as well as New Zealand’s announcement on Wednesday that it would open to the world from 12 April, would start a re-ordering of international direct flight destinations that could the accelerate the number of overseas flights direct to the city.

It comes as Air Canada today announced it would fly direct from Vancouver to Brisbane from 1 July, bringing more than 60,000 new seats annually into Queensland.

The Vancouver-Brisbane direct flights are good news for Queensland’s tourism and trade recovery.

However, Mills said international flight routes could potentially look very different to the pre-Covid era once international border restrictions saw mass global travel resume.

He said the Gold Coast had evolved during the pandemic, benefitting from a massive burst in new tourism infrastructure, major interstate migration, as well as the airport itself undergoing an overhaul that transformed it to “more like a capital city airport than a regional airport”.

“We should be coming out of the pandemic with a pretty good story,” he said.

“Certainly, part of the discussion with airlines will be whether they need to fly into Brisbane or the Gold Coast. The fact is Brisbane is the capital city and there are a number of reasons why it will continue to be the dominant airport, but we will maximise the opportunities to come directly to the Gold Coast.

“I don’t see the Gold Coast will overtake Brisbane in that regard –  from a business perspective there are a number of reasons why airlines will choose to fly into a capital city, that just makes sense. But the Gold Coast has the opportunity to outperform and pick up market share over the next few years.”

Armed with the nation’s biggest aviation attraction package, Queensland destinations were primed to pick up new international direct routes, Mills said.

As well as Air Canada’s Vancouver flights, airlines were adding capacity on Singapore and New Zealand flights to the Gold Coast, and it was expected direct flights from the Gold Coast to Japan and South Korea would recommence as soon as possible.

“When we talk about other destinations, it’s about casting the net over the broader Asia market,” Mills said.

“There’s so many countries and cities not previously or currently served by direct connections to the Gold Coast, and it would be fair to say that we are talking to a number of airlines in a number of countries.

“I think there’s so much opportunity off the back of resetting to sell the credentials of the Gold Coast and attract direct flights in.”

Mills said advances in airline technology also meant more flights could directly access the city rather than the former ‘hub and spoke model’ where airlines would fly into a capital city like Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane, and then passengers would disperse to other destinations.

“There’s more opportunity with smaller aircraft that can fly longer ranges to do more point-to-point, so it makes more sense that instead of putting all the passengers on one big plane to Brisbane to sell enough seats for flights direct to the Gold Coast on a smaller plane,” he said.

For Mills, who has been at the helm of Queensland Airports for eight years, 30 June was an opportune time to leave having ushered through the Gold Coast airport terminal upgrade as well as opening a new airport hotel while weathering the Covid crush on the travel industry.

“With borders opening up and international travel becoming a reality again for the first time in a couple of years, it’s not a bad time to take the opportunity to do a bit of travelling,” he said.