Business-led push to put western Sydney on the tourism map
THE man behind the hugely successful 100% Pure New Zealand tourism campaign is now leading a new campaign to grow the visitor economy in Sydney’s west.
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PENRITH Panthers has united with other western Sydney leaders to fund the first business-led plan for a stronger visitor economy.
Western Sydney Business Connection’s new $100,000 Western Sydney Visitor Project aims to produce a region specific visitor marketing strategy to put western Sydney on the map.
The man behind the hugely successful 100% Pure New Zealand tourism campaign, Ian Macfarlane, has been recruited to help out.
“Up to 1998 NZ had suffered market share decline in its major markets and that campaign actually allowed NZ to increase its market share in all its major markets in the seven years that followed,” Mr Macfarlane. who has also developed marketing strategies for Abu Dhabi, Cape Town, Adelaide and San Diego, said.
Mr McFarlane also led the World’s Smart Cities research project for National Geographic.
“I think western Sydney has made a giant leap forward ... to realise it does take local initiative,” Mr Macfarlane, Strategic Consultants’ managing consultant, said.
He said the challenge for western Sydney is around “getting local activation ... (and) achieving a far greater appeal to interstate travellers”.
This includes making local businesses “accountable” for the activity they can generate with the right goverment support, he said.
“I would argue in Penrith and the Blue Mounatins what it seems to me is you’re more into higher energy stuff ... hiking, walking, doing things. It would seem to me that’s the type of audience we need to attract.”
Deloitte data shows in 2015 western Sydney weclomed 9,681,183 visitors to the region, who spent over 15 million nights in western Sydney, contributing more than $2.5 billion to its economy.
Western Sydney is now NSW’s fourth largest visitor region and the Western Sydney Airport will be a large part of its future market.
The new visitor project strategy will be launched at a Western Sydney Business Connection industry forum on June 8 and be enacted from July 2017.
It comes on the back of Deloitte’s first business-led plan for jobs creation in western Sydney, launched in December 2015, to create 200,000 “great new” jobs in western Sydney by 2020.
Deloitte’s Shaping Future Cities — Designing Western Sydney report recommendations included investments in cultural infrastructure, such as developing arts and cultural spaces in disused facilities in the Penrith CBD.
Recent State Government tourism initiatives include bringing The Australian Ballet’s annual free outdoor community program, Ballet Under the Stars, to Penrith exclusively for three years, potentially injecting over $1.3 million into the local visitor economy.
LOCAL ATTRACTIONS
■ Cables Wake Park
■ Great River Walk
■ Featherdale Wildlife Park
■ Western Sydney Parklands
■ Nepean Gorge
■ iFLY skydiving
■ Jetpack Adventures
■ Penrith Whitewater Stadium
■ Wet N Wild
■ TreeTops
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