Growing regional Victoria through tourism and events is a key priority of Victorian Chamber’s Victoria Summit 2015 – Regional Victoria, opened today (14 August 2015) in Bendigo with a focus on strengthening regional business competitiveness, employment, trade and investment.

“Tourism is a significant contributor to Victoria’s regional economies, generating over $10 billion in gross regional product and employing over 100,000 people,” said Chief Executive Mark Stone.

“However, while Melbourne has enjoyed significant growth in international visitor expenditure over the past decade, regional Victoria continues to rely on domestic travel.

“With the Asian visitor economy booming, regional Victoria needs to ensure it increases its share of this important tourism market.”

Victorian Chamber’s Victoria Summit 2015 policy paper, Regional Victoria Means Business, contains a number of recommendations to support regional tourism and events including:

• Boost funding to maintain existing regional state-owned tourism infrastructure
• Maintain real funding levels to attract business events and conferences aligned to Victoria’s priority sectors and ensure Victoria’s regions reap the benefits
• Invest in high quality, high yield tourism products and services that meet the expectations of key international visitor growth markets, including in priority areas of food and wine, spa and wellness, accommodation, and nature-based tourism
• Implement an intrastate regional marketing campaign to encourage Victorians to holiday in regional Victoria
• Improve the profiling and marketing of Regional Victoria’s nature-based and touring experiences by aligning with Tourism Australia’s ‘Restaurant Australia’ and ‘Coast and Aquatic’ campaigns, and its driving holidays promotion to Chinese travellers
• Fast track planning approval processes to enable regional tourism projects to get to build stage
• Expand the Victorian regional events calendar with a focus on developing cultural and community events, as well as further support for regional business events
• Implement a funding initiative to subsidise regional tourism business listings on the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) platform so they are able to compete effectively with other states that already subsidise ATDW listings
• Swiftly co-ordinate relevant task teams to implement recommended actions contained in the Victoria Visitor Economy Review

Other priority areas addressed at the Victorian Chamber Victoria Summit 2015 include:

• Supporting regional small business
• Investing in strategic regional infrastructure and leveraging regional business capabilities
• Supporting regional leadership and deepening global business connections
• Strengthening regional skills, education and training
• Accelerating regional land-use and new business investment opportunities
• Strengthening regional service delivery and enhancing regional business decision making    

Priority projects by region have also been identified.

The Victoria Summit recommendations will form the basis of Victorian Chamber’s regional business agenda into 2016 and beyond, including for Victorian Chamber’s 2016-17 state budget submission and the next federal election.

“We cannot expect Victoria’s economic performance to be strong without vibrant, outward looking and competitive regional business,” said Mr Stone.