Cultural Plan 2013-2016 final.pdf - Coffs Harbour City Council ...

As adopted by Council on 28 February 2013
6.2. Culture and Tourism
Overwhelmingly the visitors to Coffs Harbour, and the Coffs Coast Region as a whole, are
domestic tourists who mainly visit here as families from elsewhere in NSW. They enjoy the
beaches and scenery, although their satisfaction with their holiday is greatest if they visited
Dorrigo or Bellingen as well. The key source market is other regional NSW with 34% of
visitors, although Sydney and Interstate are only slightly less (29% and 28%, respectively).
The tourism facilities in Coffs Harbour are now dated. Most of the development and
investment in infrastructure such as resort accommodation occurred in the 1980s and 1990s.
This lack of new or updated facilities may be contributing to the decline in visitor numbers.
There has been a 38% decline in overnight stays in Coffs Harbour since 2003, which is
significant.
In a recent report for the Council, tourists’ satisfaction with their visit to Coffs Harbour was
assessed against both the NSW and as importantly, against the satisfaction at a selection of
highly comparable municipalities, some of whom could be considered as competitors, such
as Port Macquarie.
Surprisingly, despite its substantial natural assets, the municipality was poorly rated against
both the state average and the subgroup in benchmarks in nature-based activities like
visiting National/State Parks and bushwalking/rainforest walks and going on organized tours.
Given the Coffs Coast Aboriginal Discovery tours and the Coffs Coast Ambassadors
program, this suggests that visitors are not getting relevant information about local offerings.
Coffs Harbour also rated poorly in relation to cultural activities, like visiting history/heritage
sites and visiting museums/art galleries. There were some experiences directly related to a
cultural policy that scored well below the benchmarks, such as:
To discover or learn something new (43%, 17 points below)
To experience arts or culture (25%, 13 points below), and
To experience our nation’s history (19%, 33 points below).
While the demand for most of these experiences would generally be expected from nonfamily
visitors, to “discover or learn something new” is an experience that can work
particularly well with a family-based market. As a 2010 study indicated, the ACT is an
example where 77% of visitors in the family demographic sought this type of experience.
“Cultural tourism” can be a difficult concept to define, but it is concerned with visitors who
make a trip to gather new information and experiences to satisfy their cultural interests.
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