With Victoria now almost landlocked by lockdowns, new data from Tourism Research Australia has shown the recovery of Ballarat's tourism economy has been driven by visiting friends and family.
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While Ballarat's overall visitation down about 50 per cent for both overnight visits and total nights year-on-year, about 40 per cent of overnight visits have come from visiting friends and family.
However, research shows not only do visitors come to see friends and family, their homes are the most popular type of accommodation.
Ballarat Regional Tourism chair Paul Martino said Ballarat has one of the strongest visiting friends and relatives market in the state.
"When you can only travel within a state, when you look at what's going on around the rest of Australia at the moment, we're seeing a very strong take-up of visitation to Ballarat," he said.
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"It's not surprising that many people come and visit, they come and stay with their relatives or their friends but they also visit restaurants and visit tourism attractions and buy a coffee and add a lot of local visitor economy."
Mr Martino said despite the statistics, Ballarat accommodation businesses had described the last two weeks as 'phenomenal'.
"I've been pleasantly surprised by the incredibly positive sentiment from the various aspects of the visitor economy. Every single person I've talked to has spoken so positively about how busy they are, how busy the short-term future's looking, how positive the comments from visitors have been," he said.
"The weekends have been almost booked out, very strong during the week as well. I've heard 60 and 70 per cent often touted.
"They've had a horribly tough year and they've put on a great show for the last couple of weeks for our visitors and our visitors have just been delighted."
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Wayne Spring, the owner of Brown Hill bed and breakfast Ballaratprimavera, said while visitation was down 50 per cent, it came during waves of zero bookings.
"When you see the figure 50 per cent, I think you got to understand that we had a three month period of about zero," he said.
"Over the year, at least 50 per cent down, but that's coloured by these periods of absolute zero."
However, Mr Spring said he had seen cases of people staying at his accommodation to visit family and friends in Ballarat who would then come to the accommodation.
"I think it creates little problem, but that said, I had a group book this whole place out and the brother of the person lived 500 metres down the road and then they made this the focal point because it's a big place with more rooms and lot of space.
"There were two sets of family in Ballarat, and they all came here so it turned that on its head in a way."
Mid Town Hotel owner Mark Finch said he was not surprised to see the statistics show such a decline in visitation but more focus could be given to other visitor markets.
"We like to have a scattering of all segments of the market, but family and friend visitation is Saturday night. They come on Saturday to Sunday. It's one day of the week," he said.
"They might come Friday night at best and it's two days of the week and no hotel these days, no business model, survives on two day a week accommodation provisions.
"During the week, that's probably as important as the family and friends market is on weekends. Not to say the family and friends market isn't important but it tends to push you over the edge to absolutely fill you up on Saturday night."