A $1.2 billion program encouraging Australians to travel interstate won't necessarily mark the end of border shutdowns, a tourism expert warns. Some 800,000 half-price airfares to holiday hot spots offered to Australian travellers in a billion-dollar federal government bid to revive the nation's struggling tourism industry. The discount will initially apply to interstate flights to 13 key regions, including tourism-dependent parts of Queensland and Western Australia, where notoriously strict border rules hit particularly hard. Despite the massive investment in encouraging Australians to holiday interstate, tourism expert Dr David Beirman said he didn't think the days of border closures were necessarily behind us. "It would be nice to think that this package will signal the end to state border closures. Unfortunately the COVID-19 pandemic and state government responses to it have a life of their own," Dr Beirman, from the University of Technology, Sydney, told news.com.au.