The story of Cairns is the story of Australian tourism, a once sleepy coastal town that becomes a tourism hot spot in the go-go 1980s thanks to its natural wonders and friendly, hard working locals who create fantastic tourism products through innovation and hard work.
They skipper boats out to the Great Barrier Reef and build up great fleets, work in kitchens and run restaurants, redevelop family land into five-star hotels, transform homes into backpacker hostels, and set up rainforest tour companies or whitewater rafting businesses.
Cairns booms, builds, prospers; builds some more, busts during the 1989 pilot dispute, recovers and rides the inbound tourism wave into the 21st century.
Before you know it there are 130,000 people living in a place that didn't have a traffic light until the early 1970s.
To the north and south, in places like Port Douglas and Mission Beach, a similar ‘build it and they will come' mentality prevails.
People live the dream and you'd have to say that wild optimism and a bit of greed starts to cloud decision making toward the end of the 1990s.
Some poor calls are made with a few industry players expanding as if the wet season does not exist and the good times will last forever.
Full story:
www.traveltrends.biz/ttn555-cairns-a-case-study-in-australian-tourism 
