Several major beaches on Queensland's Gold Coast will be off limits from Tuesday at midnight due to coronavirus concerns.

Key points: The Gold Coast Council will close The Spit, Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta beaches from midnight on Tuesday

The Gold Coast Council will close The Spit, Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta beaches from midnight on Tuesday Other beaches will be off limits to non-Gold Coast residents

Other beaches will be off limits to non-Gold Coast residents Brisbane's annual Royal show, the Ekka, has also been cancelled for only the third time in history

Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate said while locals were doing the right thing, there had been some visitors at beaches not following social-distancing rules.

"Unfortunately, over the weekend, out-of-towners are descending on the Gold Coast in mass numbers and I fear that this number will increase over the Easter weekend," he said.

"Therefore, as of midnight on Tuesday, The Spit, Surfers Paradise and Coolangatta beaches will be closed [to everyone]."

Councillor Tate said other beaches would remain open for Gold Coast residents only.

"I say to Logan and Brisbane people, we love you, but we don't want you visiting us right now," the Mayor said.

"The beaches will remain open for our locals so that they can continue to walk and exercise.

"We are working through the finer details now, including having parking officers redeployed to the Spit to monitor illegal parking up there.

"I didn't want to do this but over the weekend it showed me that especially people visiting from Brisbane are not listening to us."

Cr Tate said more beaches would be closed if people continued to ignore public health orders.

"I will absolutely close more if people think this is not for real," he said.

"The curve is starting to flatten and this is not the time to relax and let it bounce back — we have to just kill it off."

Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll said beaches would be "heavily patrolled" by police.

"Not only those beaches [that have been closed] — all of the beaches as we go into Easter weekend," she said.

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Commissioner Carroll said people who owned holiday homes should remain at their "principal residence".

"Technically if it's non-essential travel, it's not complying … you should not be on the road," she said.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reiterated people were not to treat the Easter break as a holiday.

"It's not the time to pack up and take your family to the beach — there is no holiday this year," Ms Palaszczuk said.

Ms Palaszczuk says people cannot treat this year's Easter break as a holiday. ( ABC News: Josh Bavas )

Tourism industry 'hurting'

Councillor Tate said while some Gold Coast hotels and accommodation providers were experiencing high volumes of cancellations, it showed people were listening to messaging to stay home.

"They're [tourism industry] hurting out there — it's just one of those things when a disaster hits, different sectors hurt and feel things differently," he said.

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"But my focus is on the health of our population. Compensation or any other things, I'll leave that for the Prime Minister to consider.

"When we ask people to stay in their suburb, it means don't come [to] stay on the Gold Coast.

"My heart feels for people in hospitality but if we don't do it, the longer-term effect is more devastation for our city."

Gold Coast holiday building manager Marion Simon said their occupancy rate for holiday letting had dropped to zero.

"We've literally gone from being 100 per cent booked to nobody," Ms Simon said.

"It hasn't only affected April, it has affected going forward as well, because obviously people don't know what is going to happen, when it's going to happen, if it's going to happen."

Ms Simon said the tough restrictions had been a "massive problem" for businesses who relied on busy holiday periods.

"The people taking the most flak are the business and the owners, because they still have bonds to pay and loans to pay, but they don't have any income," she said.

Councillor Tate says other beaches will remain open for Gold Coast residents only. ( ABC News: Alex Papp )

'Pretty catastrophic'

Queensland Tourism Industry Council (QTIC) chief executive officer Daniel Gschwind said the industry continued to be hit hard by coronavirus pandemic.

"It is pretty catastrophic — for most businesses in our industry it has really come to a complete standstill," he said.

"It started off with the Chinese market collapsing around us, then the international market stopped completely and now, as we all know, the domestic market has also — for all intents and purposes — completely stopped.

"It's a really bitter disappointment for many operators who were hoping that the domestic market over Easter would deliver some relief. That's not going to happen now, so many business will be on a long, hard road to recovery."

Ms Gschwind said once the public health orders were lifted after the coronavirus pandemic, the industry would focus on domestic markets.

"They will be certainly financially emaciated — there will be very little capital to get things going again," Mr Gschwind said.

"The international market will take a very long time to recover no doubt, so the domestic market — in whatever shape it's in — will be where we will focus and that's where businesses will have to focus."

Mayor Tom Tate says he's willing to close more beaches. ( ABC Gold Coast: Dominic Cansdale )

Brisbane's Ekka cancelled

Meanwhile Brisbane's Royal Queensland show, the Ekka, was cancelled today due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association of Queensland (RNA) chief executive, Brendan Christou, said this was only the third time in history the annual event, due to be held in August, would not go ahead.

"The first was in 1919 with the Spanish Influenza, the second one was in World War II, and the third of course in 2020 because of COVID-19," he said.

"We originally thought we might make this decision in June but a day in this current situation is like a week.

"We thought it fair to our exhibitors, to our sponsors and to our volunteers to bring that decision to give them notice."

Thousands of people usually attend the Ekka each day. ( AAP Image: Dan Peeled )

Mr Christou said at this stage some animal competitions could still go ahead.

"They don't breach any social-distancing requirements and that is things like our feedlot competitions, and there might be one or two others like beef or carcass competitions that can go ahead this year," he said.

"It is sad, we've had some exhibitors that have been coming every year for 50 years in our beef cattle competitions but they understand completely why it can't go ahead this year.

"Our focus now will be on creating ways to connect the city and country, through a digital means of course, so we will be working on that in the coming weeks."

Anyone who had already paid entry fees for early competitions would receive a refund.

The Royal Queensland Show has been running for almost 145 years.

Mr Christou said the show's cancellation would have an impact on the RNA's bottom line.

"It's very unlikely these restrictions are going to lifted by August and then of course being the standby hospital we don't know when or if we need to be enacted so this was a sensible thing to do," he said.

"We rely on the Ekka and other events, and it's not just the Ekka that can't proceed, all our other events in the coming months have been cancelled so it's going to have a huge impact on us as well as every other organisation across the global."

He said RNA was working with the State and Federal governments on ways to get financial assistance.

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