Towns are grateful for tourist dollars
Tourism is thriving in the Mudgee region despite back-to-back national crises.
Cara George made the move to the Mudgee area from Sydney six years ago to head up tourism for the country town known for its colonial buildings and wineries in northwest NSW.
As chief executive of Mudgee Region Tourism, she oversaw a total rebrand of the area that has seen overnight visitations grow 28 per cent in five years and injected millions of dollars into the community. In what has become a poster child for tourist towns across Australia, George puts their success down to strong collaboration with key industries including mining and real estate and its location, a mere 3½-hour drive from the city.
And despite back-to-back national crises with the bushfires that devastated much of the state in 2019/20, and now the global pandemic that has closed borders and grounded airlines, tourist dollars have continued to flow into Mudgee as stranded Australians who are unable to fly to Europe hit the road instead. Overnight visitations for July were up 28 per cent from the same period last year.
“We didn’t lose any business in the downturn,” says George, referring to travel restrictions imposed by the government to stop the spread of the virus to the regions.
“When we were able to open up travel again in June, we dropped a new campaign video onto our social channels and it was viewed more than 100,000 times, we were inundated.”
It has perhaps also helped that international tourists only ever made up 4 per cent of total visitors to Mudgee, and even then they were mostly visiting friends and relatives. Still, the town has welcomed a lot of new visitors, up 35 per cent over June and July alone. And when asked how likely it was for them to return in the next 12 months, 94 per cent said very likely, versus 64 per cent who were asked the same question a year earlier.
“We are attracting a lot of people that would ordinarily be overseas,” George says. “I think there is a feeling that borders are going to be closed for a long while yet so people will have a lot of love for the regional areas right now. People want to connect back to the land, nature and eat produce that is locally sourced. We also have a lot of interest from businesses in the Sydney area.”
But Mudgee, like many other regional tourist towns located within two to three hours driving distance from major population centres, is said to be one of the lucky ones that has managed to thrive in the pandemic despite widespread unemployment across the nation and the blow to the broader economy.
‘We are attracting a lot of people that would ordinarily be overseas ... people want to connect back to the land, nature and eat produce that is locally sourced’
There are other tourist towns scattered around the country that are doing it much harder, many of whom were not only devastated by drought, bushfires and the outbreak of COVID-19, but as recently as the past few weeks have had to contend with floods as well.
“We’ve got some community members who are on to their fourth insurance claim,” says Coralie Bell, chair of Australian Regional Tourism (ART) who is based in Shoalhaven on the south coast of NSW. “I couldn’t say the pandemic has been bitter or sweet for regional Australia, it has been a mixture.”
Bell, who has chaired ART for more than two years, says that while each state government had put significant effort in supporting tourism, with some areas enjoying significant growth and businesses reporting the busiest months they had ever seen, others had not fared so well, especially those who rely on air travel and a steady stream of international tourists.
“It’s the more remote destinations that hugely rely on people ticking off their bucket lists, like in the Northern Territory, that are going to have a significant number of businesses that will just fold and never reopen,” Bell says. “If it takes two to three years before we get (international) travel back, that will also be when the entire world turns on the marketing campaign, so how is that smaller business going to cut through?”
Bell says that is where the industry needs the government to come to the rescue and partner with the tourist operators to create that cut-through in what is expected to be an incredibly busy promotional space for tourism globally. She also warns of the “huge gap” that will be left by domestic tourists once they also resume international travel — “there is a lot to be done”.
The importance of tourist dollars for the economy has not been lost on the government, with about half of the expenditure prior to the pandemic coming from the regions. The government, back in 2009, in collaboration with the states and industry, launched Tourism 2020 aimed at boosting the competitiveness of the industry and grow its economic contribution. The goal to achieve more than $115bn in overnight spend by 2020 was met last year. That’s up from $70bn in 2009.
And in March of this year, domestic overnight tourism was still up on the previous year, despite the bushfires and the pandemic. According to Tourism Research Australia, overnight spend climbed 6 per cent to $78.8bn during the 12-month period and overnight trips were up 3 per cent to $112.3bn.
Since then the numbers have deteriorated, with spending on domestic tourism losing $11.6bn between April and May alone. The latest national visitor survey figures showed that there were 9.6 million fewer domestic overnight trips taken in April, compared to the previous year, and domestic overnight spend had slumped 91 per cent. With one in 13 jobs reliant on tourism, Federal Tourism Minster Simon Birmingham this month called on Australians to book more holidays.
Tourism Australia, part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, has, over the years, initiated a number of campaigns to attract more tourists. This included their recent “holiday here this year” campaign launched in January, aimed at promoting domestic tourism still reeling from the bushfires. Social media has also helped.
Their Instagram account alone has 4.4 million domestic and international followers and with its carefully curated content and high-quality photographs, less well-known regional areas and businesses, from the bubblegum pink lakes in Western Australia to Cactus country in Strathmerton in Victoria, have seen a boost to visitor numbers.
Phillipa Harrison, managing director of Tourism Australia, says the next iteration of their domestic campaign will be to galvanise Australians to support the tourism industry and help businesses get back on their feet by booking a domestic holiday.
“Australian tourism has faced unprecedented challenges this year,” she says. “While international borders remain closed for the foreseeable future, (we are) prioritising recovery efforts towards industry support and stimulating the domestic travel market, acknowledging of course that some travel restrictions still apply.”
She adds that getting tourists back into areas that need it most, including regions impacted by the bushfires, is critical to the industry’s recovery.
“In time, overseas visitors will form a critical part of the recovery once international borders begin to reopen,” she says. “Our ambition is to get back into market as soon as possible, working with industry and the aviation sector to ensure that Australia is well placed to welcome back international travellers.”