Tourists turn their backs on Coast | Fraser Coast News | Local News in Fraser Coast

A MAJOR rebranding campaign is needed if the Fraser Coast is to turn around flagging tourism stats.

That was the call from Kevin Smith of Holiday Hervey Bay, who also urged the region’s tourism agencies to “wake up to reality”.

New figures released by Tourism Queensland make for uneasy reading for tourist operators across the Fraser Coast, with visitor numbers dropping in the four key categories.

The number of interstate visitors – 106,000 – to the region in the year ending March 2010 plummeted by 28 per cent on the previous year, down from 148,000.

With 627,000 coming to the Fraser Coast, the number of intrastate visitors was down by 9 per cent. Overall the 734,000 domestic visitors to the Fraser Coast represented a fall-off of 12 per cent.

Holiday visitors, at 343,000, were down by five per cent.

Fraser Coast South Burnett Tourism general manager Damien Massingham said the industry had been up against it for the past 18 months.

The family drive market remained a key target, he said, and indicated a push to bring holiday-makers from mining areas to the Fraser Coast.

“We have been concentrating on the drive market for quite a while.

“It’s our strongest market. But it’s going to be tough.”

Mr Massingham did not consider the latest figures as a wake-up call, saying the challenge was ongoing.

The 42,000 drop in interstate visitors could also be linked to Jetstar’s withdrawal of its Fraser Coast to Sydney service last August.

Mr Smith wants FCSBT and the Fraser Coast Regional Council to respond assertively to worrying annual figures.

“Our problem here is the Fraser Coast council and Fraser Coast tourism don’t accept that their efforts are not bearing fruit.

“They are living in a fantasy world that everything is positive. But tourism operators here are laying off staff.”

Mr Smith claimed the region’s Fraser Coast Perfect by Nature branding was past its sell-by date and called for a rebrand every three years, as happened in Noosa.

Mr Massingham, who was inspecting the upgrade of Fraser Island’s Lake Mackenzie when the Chronicle outlined the tourism figures to him, said ensuring the tourist product remained a quality product was on a par with marketing.

He added that FCSBT continued to concentrate on awareness of the region’s brand, focusing on components like the whale-watching season and Fraser Island.

“It’s important that people enjoy the product when they are here and come back again.

“It’s also about being smarter with the very small budget we have.”

He argued that the Fraser Coast, with an estimated $1 million marketing budget, was getting more bang for its buck than the Gold Coast, which has an estimated $10m annual budget.

The Fraser Coast council contributed $488,970 from its tourism and marketing budget to the operation of the Fraser Coast South Burnett Tourism for the 2009-2010 financial year.