Our June event was held this morning at the beautiful Gunabul Homestead – Mother nature was even kind enough to take a bit of chill out of the air for our lucky early-morning attendees!
The topic of discussion today was of course the Gympie Muster, Tourism and your Business! Our guest speakers for this event were none other than Andrew Saunders, Tourism Manager for Destination Gympie Region, and David Gibson, CEO of Gympie Muster.
The Gympie Music Muster – David Gibson
David highlighted the importance of The Gympie Music Muster for the greater Gympie region and what it means for our local economy. He discussed the positive implications as a direct result of the Muster over these past 35 years, and what it will mean for us in the years to come.
David also brought to light the fact that the Muster has generated some $15 million which has gone direct to various charities over the years. An incredible sum and amazing achievement; One all of Gympie should be very proud of!
It was shared with the audience that in recent years, the Muster’s Marketing efforts have been centered around learning more about the audience and subsequent customers that the Muster attracts. Surprisingly (to some) the average customer of the Gympie Music Muster is a female, aged 44 years. David went on to discuss how crucial data analysis and core market research has been to the marketing and revenue development for the Muster.
A large amount of effort has been placed on bringing the campers and visitors to the Gympie CBD itself, in order to promote and generate further income for our local businesses. A tactic which has been changed for this year is the maps and promotional materials which are distributed ahead of the Muster. Traditionally those materials have contained information solely for the Muster itself; however, in effort to attract more foot traffic to the Pre-Muster celebrations in town.
Andrew Saunders
Continuing on the Tourism and regional focus for the morning, Andrew presented the highlights for Destination Gympie Region and also shared with us his teams plans for the year to come. Andrew discussed with the group and pointed out that tourism underpins the economic development of a region, and that it is community based; The locals play a massive role in supporting our tourism industry.
He reminded us that the tourism industry doesn’t require us to build anything and we can in fact leverage off nature.
The Destination Gympie Region team puts a large focus on marketing as well as relationship building with interstate and international entity’s which ultimately fuel our tourism industry. He says much of the focus is a combination of cost effective, long lasting and repetition marketing (such as OOH Media – Buses and billboards – and a strong social media focus) along with a high concentration on ROR: Return On Relationship. Andrew advises that until ROR is performing well, ROI (Return On Investment) may not. He says to “Think about your Relationships before you think about your Return”.
Andrew ended his presentation with a summary of a few of the achievements and movements to come with Destination Gympie Region:
•Launch and distribute new Visitor Guide (Completed 2016)
•Attend Australian Tourism Exchange – 120 meetings with 18 countries
This was the Gympie’s first opportunity to attend this event, which saw Andrew represent our region before 120 buys from all over the world. This is expected to have an enormous impact on our visibity, thus attracting more and more Guests (Visitors to Gympie are our Guests, not simply ‘Tourists‘ says Andrew) to the Greater Gympie Region.
•Attend QLD Caravan Show
•NZ roadshow
•Singapore roadshow
•Build on existing networks
•Leverage off strong Famil program of tourism media and industry specialists
•Grow number of International ready operators to 15+
•Continue to establish DGR as leading LTO in QLD
We and the attendees enjoyed a delicious fritata while listening to our special guest speakers – so much so that the Breakfast ran some 30 minutes over!
We humbly thank both Andrew and David and all who attended. See you at the next event!
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