Evolving tourism group sets targets
Adopting a tourism culture and creating an integrated marketing campaign are among the anticipated benefits of a new strategy.
Wimmera Mallee Tourism released its 2022-27 strategy last month.
Established in 2011, the group represents the collective tourism industry of Buloke, Hindmarsh, West Wimmera and Yarriambiack shires. It lists the Silo Art Trail, recreational lakes and weirs, and heritage and landscape trails among attractions.
The new strategy includes five focus areas including tourism, culture, marketing, investment in new tourism products and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The group will change its board and employment structure, with Wimmera Development Association becoming its auspice organisation, with State Government funding.
A Wimmera Mallee Tourism executive officer will begin work soon, and recruitment for a marketing and silos project officer is underway. Its board will continue in a strategic capacity.
Wimmera Development Association executive director Chris Sounness said an integrated marketing campaign would appeal to visitors, and enabled residents and businesses to communicate to potential tourists.
“For those in the business community in our region, at the moment, tourism is seen as something that’s going on; and yes, it’s important, but it’s not necessarily adding to their business,” he said.
“Visitors are turning up at hours when businesses are not traditionally open, and they want services that might or might not be offered.
“If we want to be successful, we need to get our tourism culture right, so that people want to visit and they want to spend money in the region. “For businesses, the reward has to be there.” Mr Sounness said understanding the motivations of business owners was important.
“It’s very easy for those who aren’t business owners to say that businesses should be doing this or doing that. It’s naïve of us to make assumptions about what motivates people, and what it is that they want,” he said.
“They’re living in a small country town – often because it has a certain way of life, like getting involved in sport on Saturday afternoons and spending time with the family on Sundays.”
Wimmera Mallee Tourism lists within the strategy its intent to attract 494,330 total visitors, a 13.6 percent per year increase; and 255,460 day visitors, a 12.7 percent per year increase, by 2027.
Other targets include $158-million total expenditure,
a 18.9 percent per year increase; $518 average spend per overnight visitor, up from $417 in 2021; and $132 average spend per day visitor, up from $117 in 2021. It wants to see 549,400 visit nights, an increase of 17.1 percent per year; 238,870 overnight visitors, increasing 14.6 percent per year; and an average length of overnight visits of 2.3 days, up from 2.02 in 2021.
Mr Sounness said connecting and leveraging marketing efforts in other areas, such as other Wimmera shires and the Grampians tourism footprint, and encouraging visitors to travel throughout the region was beneficial.
“It’s easier to get people to drive from the Grampians to the western areas of the region than attracting them from Melbourne,” he said.
He said designing and hosting events that accommodated for residents and gave visitors a chance to ‘be part of the community’ was also increasingly important.
Remplan estimates of total output for Wimmera Mallee’s ‘tourism characteristic’ industries – those being accommodation and food services, art and recreation and transport – to extend visitor expenditure to $187,5-million, or 6.95 percent of the economy’s total output.
Wimmera Mallee Tourism sits within the Grampians tourism region – one of 12 tourism regions statewide.