By Tourism Noosa Ceo Damien Massingham
As we officially say farewell to the summer holidays this weekend, by all accounts from our members it has been a great summer, with many of our operators reporting visitors have booked their next holiday for summer 2017.
This is a very encouraging trend and highlights that visitors to Noosa are loving their quintessential Australian holiday experience in Noosa.
Thank you to all the operators and the Noosa community for providing such a warm welcome to our visitors.
On the back of summer holidays, our marketing activities have already commenced for the year with our marketing manager, Louise Terry, taking Noosa to the world! Commencing with a trade mission in Singapore with other tourism partners before heading to Europe and the UK as part of Tourism and Events Queensland’s (TEQ) Queensland on Tour roadshow.
Louise has met with more than 300 product managers from key wholesalers and retail travel agents in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Copenhagen, finishing in London where she also undertook a Noosa Roadshow with our in-market representation company, SLC.
This focus on the international market has been guided by Tourism Noosa’s current Global Market Strategy which sets a vision to build a sustainable global market for Noosa, focusing on value over volume through brand profile, beneficial partnerships, trade engagement, product development and consumer marketing.
The latest international visitor statistics for Noosa highlight not only growth in visitor numbers, but importantly the amount that these visitors are spending while in Noosa is also up with both at unprecedented highs. Noosa’s international visitor spend was up 73 per cent to reach $105.9 million, with annual increases in spend across all of Noosa’s major inbound markets. This increase compares to Queensland’s being up 10.6 per cent and Australia’s up 11.5 per cent for the same period*. (*Source: Tourism Research Australia International Visitor Survey , year ending September 2016).
These positive results highlight the need to continue to plan for our future. As such Tourism Noosa will soon be launching our Tourism Strategy for 2017-’22 to ensure Noosa continues to be a key destination for our target markets and, in particular, our international markets.
In implementing this strategy, we will be working with all our stakeholders including our members and the Noosa Council to help address a range of matters including transport, to help continue a positive visitor and community experience of Noosa.
As we look to the future of tourism in Noosa, it is important to remember that tourism is the largest economic contributor for the Noosa region, injecting $940 million into the Noosa economy over the last year, via visitor expenditure. This has kept over 16,000 local people in employment in Noosa.
All the best for 2017.
