Bendigo has been named the third best tourism town in Victoria at the Top Tourism Town Awards.
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The central Victorian city picked up the bronze award behind gold award winner Ballarat and silver winner Lakes Entrance.
City of Greater Bendigo manager of tourism and major events Terry Karamaloudis said with the weight of the votes coming from the public, it was a well deserved effort for Bendigo's tourism industry.
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"This is a win for our accommodation providers, hospitality sector, the broader stakeholder groups, the amazing attractions all way down to the citizens of Bendigo who welcome visitation into Bendigo," he said.
"To come out of the awards as the third-best regional city in the state is an amazing achievement."
In the top small tourist town category (populations under 5000), Port Fairy took home gold ahead of Timboon (silver) and Apollo Bay (bronze).
The inaugural awards are part of a new initiative under the Victorian and Australian Tourism Awards process and recognise towns that give the best visitor experiences.
Bendigo was able to showcase some of its experiences to the finalists and judges with the award ceremony held at the Bendigo Art Gallery last Wednesday night.
"We know the gallery has been a pivotal piece infrastructure that has driven visitation in the arts and culture centre for 20-odd years when the city made the decision to move away from heritage and history (attractions) to the arts and culture (sector)," Mr Karamaloudis said.
While the awards highlighted individual town's tourism efforts, Mr Karamaloudis said collaboration between towns and regions would be important in a post-COVID world.
"The whole COVID environment is changing the landscape quickly," he said. "Once collaboration and unity among regions, in terms of whatever sector you were in, wasn't encouraged that much.
"But COVID is teaching us to think differently on how we strategise tourism initiatives. We are seeing that move to unity and collaboration among regions."
Mr Karamaloudis said since COVID hit, work and collaboration between Bendigo, Ballarat and other regions has never been more significant.
"It needs to be. More than ever we need more unique points of difference to draw people into the state and out to our regions," he said.
"Once we would have been seen as competitors but we are very much collaborators now and looking for ways to strengthen our regions' products. Only good can come out of that."
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