New app and website to boost visitor economy in Sydney’s West
CANTERBURY Bulldogs have united with other western Sydney leaders to promote the region as a world-class tourism destination via a new website and mobile app, featuring special offers for those who download it.
The Express
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THE Canterbury Bulldogs have united with other western Sydney leaders to promote the region as a world-class tourism destination where locals, as well as international and domestic visitors, can stay and play.
The $500,000 “Sydney’s West: You’ll love it as much as we do” campaign, led by Western Sydney Business Connection (WSBC), aims to produce a region-specific visitor marketing strategy to put western Sydney on the map.
WSBC president Brendon Noney said the unified business-led plan campaign was the first ever promotional campaign for western Sydney, which welcomed 12.4 million visitors in 2016.
The Sydney’s West campaign aims to bring 185,000 more visitors to the region each year between now and 2030 — and create $1.1 billion of direct incremental spend over the period.
Attracting migrants and international students was key to the success of growing the western Sydney economy, said Ian Macfarlane, who also developed the hugely successful 100% Pure New Zealand tourism campaign, as well as marketing strategies for Abu Dhabi, Cape Town, Adelaide and San Diego. He cautioned: “Having an attraction in a place, doesn’t give an ‘experience’. Around the world there are many ‘white elephants’; testimony to a failed tourism agenda and the internally held beliefs that visitors will arrive as a consequence of the infrastructure, events and activities.”
Western Sydney Business Connection plans to direct market to interstate national rugby league team fans to travel to Sydney to watch the Bulldogs play their team.He said the challenge for Sydney’s West 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 government support, he said.
WSBC general manager Amanda Brisot agreed competitive markets around the world no longer marketed only to tourists. She said studies showed migrants and students were “more important financially”.
Mr Macfarlane said a tourist might visit for three days and spend $150 a night, but a student spent money on university fees, accommodation and food for their stay which could be years.
“I’ve done a lot of work with University of California; I was trying to understand the dynamic of attracting students,” Mr Macfarlane, Strategic Consultants’ managing consultant, said.
He found social life had to be a focus. “A university that’s doing it right is Newcastle. They moved all their creative faculties into the centre of Newcastle and now the whole ambience (in the CBD) is changing and part of the reason is student life is evolving.”
He said that “lifestyle-experiences” had to packaged to make the trip worthwhile for any visitor, something Sydney’s West new “Sydneywest” mobile phone app will help do.
The app allows tourists, residents and short term visitors to access facilities, activities and events in Sydney’s west at any, and in real, time.
Tourism Minister, Adam Marshall, recently helped launch phase one of the Sydney’s West project — the app and a website — at Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre.
On the night, he vowed his government would continue to partner with western Sydney’s councils, industry bodies and local businesses to help the region achieve its “vast, vast potential as far as attracting more international, interstate tourists, boosting the visitor economy, creating more jobs and bringing more wealth to this part of the world”.
“There is not a place anywhere in this great state in such a relatively small geographic area that has the richness of product and offering and people that could actually pull this off,” Mr Marshall said, adding “tonight we’re saying the culmination of a lot of that work ... (but) it’s simply the beginning.”
The tourism push comes on the back of Deloitte’s first business-led plan for jobs creation in western Sydney, to create 200,000 “great new” jobs in western Sydney by 2020.
Ms Brisot said the Sydney’s West campaign would create 36,000 new jobs over 12 years.
Destination NSW data shows western Sydney already delivers $4.2 billion in visitor expenditure.
Ms Brisot said they were working on a direct marketing campaign with big sporting codes, including the Canterbury Bulldogs national rugby league team and the Western Sydney Wanderers A-League soccer club, to drive interstate travel.
“With the Wanderers, for example, we would do a deal with Adelaide United encouraging Adelaide fans, who already have a propensity to travel, to watch the games here in Sydney and we would put together travel packages so they would extend their stay,” she said.
The WSBC is also in talks with the Parramatta Eels, Penrith Panthers and Wests Tigers NRL teams and the Greater Western Sydney Giants AFL club.
Local attractions
■ Bankstown Arts Centre
■ Red Baron Joy Flights
■ Cooks River Cycleway
■ Heli Scenic Flights and Training
■ Canterbury Olympic Ice Rink
■ Bass Hill’s Dunc Gray Velodrome
Dogs bite back