Each year we welcome around 1.3 million visitors to our beautiful part of the world. These visitors contribute $385 million annually to Eurobodalla’s local economy, and more than 2500 local jobs, or around 67 per cent, are directly supported by tourism. Another 1,300 (23 per cent) are indirectly supported by the visitor industry.
It’s a vitally important part of our economy and Council is changing up its approach. Firstly, the tourism and events team was made part of Council’s strategic and sustainable growth division in July 2017. Since then, we’ve been working away behind the scenes to better position Eurobodalla and its towns and villages in the very crowded regional tourism marketplace.
Sydney advertising agency Jim Jam Ideas have started work to develop a new tourism brand and creative marketing approach for Eurobodalla. They presented initial concepts to Council and a group of our tourism industry stakeholders recently and I’m super excited about their creative ideas. We plan to launch the new campaign in March next year and you can expect a contemporary and fun approach that gets Eurobodalla on the radar, differentiates us from other coastal destinations, increases yield and instils community pride.
In addition to marketing, work has begun to identify new tourism product and experiences to position Eurobodalla as a leading nature-based tourism destination. Consultants Inspiring Place are preparing a feasibility study that will identify nature-based tourism product and shovel-ready projects that can commence in the next two years.
Work also continues on developing a new events strategy to provide a framework for how Council supports tourism and community events.
Yep, that’s a lot of plans, but our tourism and events team are taking an integrated approach to how tourism develops across the shire, and more importantly how we improve the contribution of tourism to our local economy. Watch this space, there’s exciting times ahead.
