Bendigo tourist attractions and businesses may soon use new key performance indicators to measure the success of tourism in the area.
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The new indicators were part of a number of recommendations made by the Victoria Tourism Industry Council to the state government's Regional Tourism Review.
VTIC hopes the recommendations can help the flourishing regional visitor economy continue to grow in the next decade.
Bendigo Heritage Attractions chief executive Peter Abbott said data such as visitor spending would be more valuable than just counting the number of tourists who visit and area.
"People always want to talk visitor numbers but visitor spend is a more sustainable way of measuring impacts on regions," he said. "I came from the Great Ocean Road and there are vast numbers of tourists at the 12 Apostles but the visitor spend is very low.
"Visitor economy shows how locals benefit form visitors."
VTIC chief executive Felicia Mariani said regional tourism businesses were becoming more innovative in the products and services they provide to visitors.
"Tourism is a key contributor to Victoria's regional economy, generating $7.5 billion in economic activity and directly and indirectly employing over 85,000 people," she said.
"Regional tourism businesses and partner organisations are taking the lead to stay competitive, becoming more strategic in their planning, marketing and promotion.
"The role of policy makers is to support these efforts, helping our regions and their individual businesses navigate the opportunities and challenges that are emerging."
City of Greater Bendigo manager of tourism and major events Terry Karamaloudis said a deeper drill into data through new key performance indicators would allow the city to have stronger grounds to lobby for funds for future projects.
"Bendigo has done very well with state and federal funding," he said. "There has been support for galleries, theatres, airports, sport infrastructure and aquatic centres. It's a long list of support from varying levels of government.
"We're not ungrateful but there is more to do and we believe if had a deeper drill down into the data through a series of KPIs, we could present a better story to the state government (for future projects)."
The report highlighted Victoria as falling behind in accommodation development for regional areas but Mr Karamaloudis said that was not the case in Bendigo.
"We're fortunate to have a good cross section of accommodation in Bendigo," he said.
"There's critical things we need here (first). We need the completion of the airport to take bigger planes, there's more work to be done at Golden Dragon Museum, there's the Central Deborah Gold Mine revitalisation project and the Great Stupa.
"These are projects are waiting to be funded. All have been recipients previously, and we're grateful, but these jobs need to be finished if we're to grow tourism and attract more people to the city.
"If the city's accommodation was booked out every week of the year then you might say we need more accommodation, but it's not the case. There are peak times like the weekends for Groovin the Moo, the swap meet and the sheep and wool show but at this point we're really well catered for."
Another recommendation from VTIC was the state's need to develop a "Strategic Destination Masterplan" for Victoria.
The master plan would establish targets and action plans to see Victoria meet the national average of visitor spending.
Mr Abbott said one of the challenges for regional areas was drawing visitors away from the metropolitan areas.
"We need more strategy around getting people to regional areas, not just within 90 minutes of Melbourne but getting them right out (to regional areas)," he said.
"That (comes back to) supporting tourism in the right spots, looking at inhibitors to investment in regions.
"We're not doing badly in tourism but there are opportunities to get more people out (of Melbourne). We want the benefits to spread wider than just Melbourne."
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