Councillors from Cabonne, Blayney and Orange met on Monday afternoon with industry leaders in a first of its kind, tourism brand forum at the Hotel Canobolas in Orange. Whilst this group has buy in from the three Councils, it is still to be sanctioned by the Department of Local Government.
Peter Robson, Chairman of the Board said, “The Board has determined that we need a different approach, and that we need to modernise our approach as there is a younger demographic which is clearly attracted to this region.”
“We are embarking on our regional tourism brand project and it’s important that we include our community leaders as part of this process,” explained Caddie Marshall, General Manager for TDO Ltd trading as Orange Region Tourism.
“Most importantly we must turn up the voices of close to 1 million visitors that come and enjoy our region on an annual basis. We need to ensure that we are positioning and presenting our region in a way that continues to build on our appeal. With 95% travelling by car, and only 33% staying overnight, one of the challenges is to encourage these people to stay overnight to experience all the region has to offer”.
In August 2016, Orange City Council hosted a tourism forum which delivered a clear message from our region’s tourism operators. That is, an industry based organisation supported by Local Government that takes a collaborative, regional approach to tourism. “Over the past several years our region has enjoyed terrific growth from both domestic and international visitors. We need to continue to build on this growth as this provides business and investor confidence in our region. To do this we need to work together and make it easy for visitors to discover everything our region has to offer,” continued Caddie.