2020-01-13 GC Agenda - Item 10 - Attachment 1 - Report on the Sustainable Tourism Stakeholder Reference Group

Issues

1. Tourism Data
It is fair to say that tourism in Noosa has enjoyed a series of good years since the end of the global financial
crisis. Certainly there has been considerable growth whether measured by visitor numbers or by financial
benefits to the local economy.

Overnight visitors are significant because they are the visitors targeted by Tourism Noosa’s “value over
volume” strategy. This strategy ensures that destination marketing is pitched at the visitor that provides
the highest economic value, that being the overnight visitor, as opposed to the drive-in day visitor.

Tourism Research Australia figures for the year ending December 2019 (see table below) show that there
were slightly more day trippers (1.3 million) than overnight visitors (1.164 million). The total spend of the
overnight visitors is $998.6 million, whereas the total spend for the day trip visitors is close to ten percent
of that overnight visitor total, with day trip spend being $98 million.

What is perhaps most interesting is that total overnight visitor numbers were up 8% on the previous year,
and total numbers of day trip visitors were up twice as much at 17%. This may indicate the beginnings of a
trend towards increasing numbers of day visitors? Yet, in spite of this increase in day visitor numbers, their
overall spend was actually down by -6%. In other words, there were more day trip visitors but they were
spending less overall. Meanwhile, the spend of the overnight visitors went up by 18%.




The success of the value over volume strategy can be seen in the following bar graph of the 4-year change
between 2015 and 2019 for overnight visitors. Although the numbers of overnight visitors have increased
by 26.8%, they are staying in Noosa for more nights, and the total spend for overnight visitors is up by
58.5% over the 4 year period.


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