THE ACT government is launching a pandemic tourism initiative to bring back visitors from its largest markets.

Taxpayers are set to fork out $1.5 million for the ACT covid-safe tourism co-investment program to ensure the industry that continues to be impacted from the virus recovers.

The new program will match funding to businesses to develop covid-safe tourism products and infrastructure.

A further $2 million will be spent over the next three years on the “More Than” destination marketing campaign that was instigated in September last year.

Canberra’s largest-ever domestic tourism campaign aims to rebuild and grow overnight visitor expenditure to $3.5 billion by 2030 from the measures.

Investment aims to strengthen its reach into the ACT’s largest markets of Sydney, regional NSW, south-east Queensland, Melbourne and regional Victoria.

The tourism industry employed 18,500 people and contributed around $2.5 billion to the territory economy through 2019.

The combination of earlier bushfires and COVID-19 wiped out around $1.3 billion in financial returns from overnight visitor expenditure until September last year.

The government plans to deliver additional support for the recovery of the sector through the 2020-21 ACT budget.

Around 90 per cent of Canberra’s visitors come from the domestic Australian market, ensuring the territory should be able to recover quicker than most states.