Page 4591 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 31 October 2018
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the industry. This includes the ability of and the costs associated with managing overnight and temporary parking and greywater dumping points.
As one of the world’s best cities to visit, the quality of the visitor experience we provide to diverse audiences is recognised and making a difference. The government’s approach to driving demand and visitation from a diverse range of audiences is also working. I thank Mr Wall for the motion.
MR RATTENBURY (Kurrajong) (5.01): The ACT Greens recognise the benefits of a strong, diverse and sustainable tourism sector for our economy and our community. Tourism provides opportunities for employment, enhances Canberra’s reputation and contributes around $1.65 billion to the ACT economy, as Minister Gentleman just noted.
The ACT’s 2020 tourism strategy has been informed by a robust market assessment, including a consumer demand research project to assess areas of demand and untapped potential. We know that the ACT is increasingly becoming a more popular tourist destination—Minister Gentleman has just given figures—the ACT welcomed 2.69 million domestic visitors in the past year, a growth of around eight per cent, according to the national visitor survey for the year ending March 2018.
We recognise the work that the government has already done to make it easier to travel to Canberra, but there may be opportunities for further growth by looking at specific markets like RV tourism. I also note that given that the ACT government has set itself a goal of growing the overnight visitor expenditure to $2.5 billion by 2020 any potential untapped markets could help contribute to meeting this goal.
From a Greens perspective it is great that people are getting outdoors and exploring our beautiful natural places of which the ACT has no shortage. And while for many people they may do that through camping or by visiting and then staying in hotels, clearly some people prefer using an RV, a caravan or campervan for their travel. This is particularly the case for many older Australians who have time to travel and can do so more economically using their own RV.
That is why we called for the development of a grey nomad tourism strategy to bolster the ACT’s performance in this sector through the 2012 parliamentary agreement. It would be fair to say that we got the idea from various stakeholders who had flagged a gap here. Unfortunately, we do not have a specific strategy resulting from that, but the government has included consideration of the needs of niche cohorts such as grey nomads in the 2020 tourism strategy.
We know that the grey nomad phenomenon is only continuing to grow, and this presents an opportunity for the ACT to enhance its reputation and visitor numbers. Canberra is certainly a place of great attraction for grey nomads. Of course, there are many national institutions and there are many people moving here from other places for their jobs and often grandparents are keen to come and visit. There are all sorts of angles you can imagine on this. But certainly something like the War Memorial would be a particular interest to this cohort of travellers.
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