Part 1 - Shire of Ashburton

Shire of Ashburton Tourism Strategy
January 2011
making and was found to act as a filter to brochures, guides and maps. Research reveals that good pre‐trip
planning information along with adequate road signage can lead to visiting more attractions, better time
management and higher satisfaction with the overall journey. More recent developments in the improved delivery
of visitor information via interactive websites and podcast capabilities also open the door to more innovative
access to the self drive traveller. On the road, sources of information are much different to those used before
leaving home and this is where Visitor Information Centres (VICs) play a key role. The desire for ‘freedom’ inherent
in the drive holiday means that little more than the first and last nights accommodation is typically booked in
advance and only around 40% of self drive visitors actually travel the route they had originally planned. It is
information collected on the route from places like visitor information centres that can change drivers’ plans and
this highlights the importance of the Tom Price and Onslow Visitor Centres working more closely together and
with neighbouring Visitor Centres such as Exmouth, Broome, Port Hedland and Karratha.
1.5 Successful tourism = Increased $ into a Community
Successful tourism should always translate into additional cash into a community. The goal of engaging in tourism
development and promotion for a region ultimately should be to ensure that more cash is imported into a
community from local tourism than is exported. When local residents earn money in a community and spend
some of it outside of this community this is referred to as leakages. Successful tourism is a way to fill this gap, with
visitors injecting cash without the need for that community to extend social and other services.
Communities with successful tourism programs will see that the local industry actually subsidises the community,
whereas communities where tourism programs are not effective or do not exist are in fact subsidising visitors –
providing services that visitors use but don’t leave money behind that cover the cost of having them available.
Ultimately, successful tourism should be primarily measured by how much additional visitor dollars are spent in a
community.
1.6 Three Basic Approaches to Tourism development
In general terms, for a local community there are 3 basic approaches to tourism;
1. Status Quo; if you do nothing to further the development of a local tourism industry, there will still be an
element of tourism just by the fact that some visitors will pull off local highways for services such as petrol
and food, and by the fact that a major reason for visiting any destination will also remain “visiting friends
and relatives” – the important VFR visitor market. If there are local residents then some degree of tourism
will always exist regardless of what local government does.
2. Getting visitors to stop; getting people to stop is always the first priority of successful tourism. There
would be substantial economic benefits by simply encouraging just a small percentage of those holiday
makers currently travelling along the major self drive access routes of the North West Coastal and Great
Northern Highways to stop and visit visitor destinations like Onslow and Tom Price for just one or two
extra nights.
3. Becoming a Visitor Destination; a successful tourism destination is not achievable if a community is
unable to get visitors to stop so point 2 above is necessary if this third point is to be achieved. Once
motivated to stop, there must be things to see and do, attractions and/or amenities that will convince
visitors to spend time in the area, and ultimately overnight there as well. Overnight visitors spend
approximately three times the level of daytripper expenditure and roughly ten times those that simply
make a “pit stop”.
In terms of visitor expenditure, overnight visitors are what highly successful tourism destinations must ultimately
target and strive for.
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