BALLARAT’S 2011-12 summer tourism calender was the busiest yet, injecting $5.5 million into the local economy, but the success did not necessarily flow on to Ballarat’s established tourist destinations.
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Ballarat Regional Tourism (BRT) reported that January and February this year were the busiest in terms of visitor numbers and the number of events and festivals on offer across the region.
Events such as the Ballarat Beer Festival, which attracted over 5000 people and had an estimated economic impact of $600,000, joined others like the Mars Cycling Australia Open Road Championship and the Victorian PGA to boost the region’s tourism profile.
BRT chairman Stuart Benjamin said the spike in events was due to a “concerted effort” to invest in high-volume events and festivals.
Director George Sossi said this summer’s cooler weather was also to thank.
“When it’s hot, people go to the beach, and consequently visitation numbers to attractions go down. So the poorer weather definitely attributed to people exploring the events our region had to offer,” he said.
But it was a different story at one of Ballarat’s year-round attractions.
A spokesperson from the Ballarat Wildlife Park said they definitely hadn’t seen a very big increase in visitor numbers for the same period.
“We’re at the mercy of the weather and because it hasn’t been a great summer in that regard, tourist numbers have actually been a little bit down in total from last year,” the spokesperson said.
Sovereign Hill CEO Jeremy Johnson said it was difficult to determine if the outdoor museum received extra visitors as a result of Ballarat’s summer events.
However Mr Johnson said he was fully supportive of the city’s push for more major events in the region.
“The trend over the last 10 years has been that people are taking less long holidays and more day-trips,” he said.
“The nature of Sovereign Hill is that you plan to spend the day here, so it’s a bit hard if you are at the cycling and want to visit for a few hours.”
Mr Johnson said numbers of interstate visitors have increased at Sovereign Hill, while numbers of visitors from central and Western Victoria have declined slightly.
“We’re also up 13 per cent on metropolitan Melbourne visitors,” he said.
