News.

08/02/12

VICs of the future

Having been engrossed for a while in developing a model for visitor information and servicing in Sydney it was interesting to learn about  how a tourism board made its visitor centre look and feel like an Apple store.  Lots of interesting things happening around visitor information and servicing initiatives in Manchester.

31/05/11

Escape the Rat Race to an Australian evocity or a PORTown

We’ve worked for Wagga Wagga City Council and one of us was born and grew up in Albury, so we’ve got a strong affinity for the rationale behind the ‘evocity‘ campaign inviting city dwellers to experience the art of living, working or investing in Albury, Armidale, Bathurst, Dubbo, Orange, Tamworth or Wagga.

And the push to ‘PORT’ (promote our regional towns) encouraging regional towns to apply for Federal grants of up to $1Million on the strength of the evocity campaign is fantastic.

But we just can’t help wondering if the name ‘evocity’ is a bit contrived…………even though the 7 evocities are centres of ‘Energy, Vision and Opportunity’ – does the name ring true? does it resonate with target markets? are city dwellers beginning to think ‘I must move to an evocity?’

The question has relevance to those regional towns who want to take advantage of the PORT funding – what will a collaborative campaign by the smaller councils of Parkes, Lithgow, Cowra, Young, and the Mid-Western Region be branded: ‘portowns’? ‘evotowns’? ‘etrrtowns’ (Escape the Rat Race towns)?

We’d love to hear what others think….especially anyone already touched by the evocity work.  This little video on the evocity website says it all…….

06/04/11

Industry calls for visa changes to boost tourist travel

As China becomes the number one source of international tourist arrivals for the first time, Australia’s Tourism and Transport Forum (TTF) has called for a changes to the ‘highly bureaucratic, cumbersome and expensive tourism visa application processes’ that are currently in place. Sounds eminently sensible – anything we can do to improve visitation from a variety of markets could help to offset anticipated declines from Japan and New Zealand, two of our top 5 international markets.