With more tourists coming to Mackay, the region’s tourism boss wants people to take advantage of it.Published on : Monday, December 4, 2017
With more tourists coming to Mackay, the region’s tourism boss wants people to take advantage of it.
Mackay Tourism general manager Tas Webber said that creating more products to attract tourists is among the principal strategies for maintaining record visitor numbers for the region.
To quote Mr. Webber, “The demand is coming up and we have been focusing on building that demand with the hope that someone will come along and say, “Wow there is an extra 100 people coming for the wallaby experience daily – how can I tap into that?” So what we are hoping is that innovation comes in behind the demand, and we start to see new business opening up.”
“Right now we have amazing experiences but a limited amount of ways of getting (tourists) there,” he said. “We are at that tipping point right now (where product is needed).”
Mr. Webber said that more businesses are needed to help grow the tourism brand further.
According to Tourism Research Australia, Mackay’s overnight visitors increased from 793,000 in 2013 to 928,000 in 2017.
International visitor numbers rose from 44,000 to 45,000 in the same period, but international visitor nights decreased from 753,000 nights to 432,000.
But increasing and maintaining the visitor number is still a big challenge, despite the success of the past 18 months.
“When we had the resource boom we really dropped the ball on quality of service,” Mr Webber said.
“I guess we didn’t have to work hard, there were people here no matter what you did – there was always people here. We have to make sure the entire region understands the visitor economy and where they fit into it.”
Tags: Mackay Tourism