Paul Weston: Tourism’s tough challenge post-Games to get visitors staying longer
FASTER than the 100m sprint heats, the Games will be finished. The focus will turn to how our tourism industry will compete after the event. We are in for some shock competition and must find new attractions.
Opinion
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FASTER than the 100m sprint heats, the Games will be finished. The focus will turn to how our tourist industry will compete after the event. We are in for some shock competition and must find new attractions.
A briefing to city councillors from Gold Coast Tourism’s corporate affairs and strategy director Dean Gould provided the good, the bad and ugly about trends in the 12 months to last September.
The good is that for the first time the Coast had a record number of overnight visitors — more than four million domestic and just over one million international visitors.
Domestic overnight expenditure was up to 3.7 per cent on the previous year.
How can this be bad? The increased growth in local visitors is continuing to outpace their spending. International expenditure is also down by 4.1 per cent.
“That’s what we’re very concerned about,” Mr Gould told councillors.
Occupancy on the Coast was around 71 per cent, slightly down on the previous 12 months. Yet revenue was up due to hoteliers charging more.
“The appeal of the destination is still high. The message is getting out there. But there’s that shift in domestic and internationals with less of a stay,” Mr Gould said.
Everyone acknowledged the photographs of beach volleyball publicising the Commonwealth Games will get more bums on airline seats to Coolangatta.
The ugly is how other destinations are scoring more runs. Councillors remarked about the more positive trends for the Sunshine Coast.
They were told Tasmania and Melbourne remain “the poster boys” for Australian tourism through cultural tourism.
Mr Gould admitted Brisbane remained a threat with the Queens Wharf project, the new casino and retail precinct fronting the river due to be opened by 2022.
So what are the solutions, given tourism accounts for more than 70 per cent of the city’s economy?
About $400,000 will be spent from this month until late June on a post-Games campaign to attract the drive market.
Events, tourism and governance committee chair Bob La Castra summed our tourism crossroads.
“We desperately need something bright, new and shiny. People are coming here, going to the beach, buggering around on the beach and going home again,” he said.
Councillors inside the Evandale chamber had in front of them 50 pages of tourism data. Families may not have quite that much information but at the start of every year everyone has a rough idea of their yearly budget.
Some are lucky enough to prepare for an overseas holiday, others enjoy a regular week-long camping trip, many more consider a quick overnight stay at Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne to watch a show or may be a Broncos-Titans away game.
Few of us can combine all and a longer stay requires an apartment with a kitchen or beach house to cook meals and save costs.
The Coast doesn’t really have to sell the beach because what it offers is as clear as a sunny day in Surfers Paradise. But we need to promote our newer cultural and sporting attractions.
Clever marketing of concerts and festivals, combining those events with games for the Suns and Titans, will capture interstate visitors looking for enough reasons to have a winter escape.
Along with opening up the hinterland, tourists may not bugger off as fast as a rollercoaster ride.
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