TECHNOLOGY has helped level the playing field for smaller, regional operators, a keynote speaker at this year’s Victorian Tourism Conference says.
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Entrepreneur and blogger Steve Sammartino said today’s communication technology meant smaller tourism businesses could compete at a higher level once only accessible to huge multinational corporations because they were able to connect with audiences around the globe, at low cost.
Mr Sammartino said word of mouth was a more powerful promotional tool than advertising and technology gave businesses the opportunity to facilitate it.
Through technology, such as social media, tourism operators could engage their customers and enable them to share their experiences, he said, as well as reward them for doing so.
Mr Sammartino said smaller businesses could even have an advantage in this respect because they were often freer to be creative and experiment.
But he said the benefits of technology for regional business extended beyond tourism.
In many jobs, technology had done away with the need for the worker to be in the same physical location as their work, Mr Sammartino said, which would lead to more people living in regional locations such as Bendigo, boosting the economies of these towns.
Hundreds of representatives from the state’s tourism industry have attended this year’s conference, including several from Bendigo and central Victoria.
City of Greater Bendigo executive manager of tourism Kathryn Mackenzie said she hoped the conference would serve as both a reinforcement of the direction the local tourism industry was taking, and inspiration to innovate.
“I just think this is a really great opportunity to showcase the work we’ve done as a city,” Ms Mackenzie said.
But she said the conference was also important for strengthening partnerships, with collaboration key to the industry in regional Victoria, particularly to attracting new markets.
Ms Mackenzie also said the state as a whole needed to deliver solid experiences to attract international visitors to Victoria.
Victoria Tourism Industry Council chief executive officer Dianne Smith said a good local example of this year’s conference theme of evolution was the Bendigo Art Gallery.
Ms Smith said the gallery had, over the years, introduced small changes to attract new exhibitions to the city and curate its own, which had led to Bendigo becoming a “cultural mecca”.
She cited Ulumbarra Theatre (the former Sandhurst Gaol) as another example of various sectors of the community collaborating to reshape a facility into something “quite special”.
Change key focus of industry event
About 360 people from the state’s tourism industry are attending the Victorian Tourism Conference in Bendigo.
The two-day conference kicked off on Monday and continues on Tuesday, with nearly 30 local, national and international speakers.
Ms Smith said the event aimed to bring together people working in the state’s tourism industry to share ideas and promote the growth of the sector.
She said this year’s theme, “Experience Evolution”, encouraged reflection on where the industry had come from and what it needed to do into the future to respond to changing desires.
Ms Smith said the operators that survived into the future would be those that were adaptable and fluid.
Attendees were given the chance to experience Bendigo as a tourist on Sunday with tours of landmarks and restaurants in the city.
It is the first time the event has been held in Bendigo in its current incarnation.