With the school holidays quickly approaching (4 weeks til Christmas!), we are beginning to see a flurry of activity on our digital channels of people from interstate exploring holidays in our backyard.
For visitors, every touch point during their holiday makes a difference, and our local businesses play a major role in this. By consistently delivering exceptional experiences around the region, it inspires our visitors to return and spend more money in our community.
As part of our strategic planning process for the destination last year, we did extensive research into the appeal factor of the Bundaberg region and the community sentiment. This included social listening, product and experience audits, mystery shoppers, focus groups and face to face interviews. Through this process we uncovered such a strong sense of pride amongst respondents, with consistent positive themes shining through, particularly around our people and our landscape.
Survey comments included:
“The Bundaberg community likes sharing its space and welcomes visitors to their region.”
“Most of the Bundaberg community value getting along with others. They are generally considerate, kind, generous, trusting and trustworthy. The community is optimistic.”
“As a past visitor and now a resident of Bundaberg, I feel that the people of Bundy are very welcoming and more than happy to assist you with anything that you might need, this reflects well of the attitude of the area.”
With travelers trusting word of mouth, online recommendations, and the way a place makes them feel even more than ever before, the sentiment of the community is one of the most important factors of the tourism industry.
This year, many of us explored our own backyard more than before, discovering places we might not have ever been. If you have not yet done so, please share your incredible experiences far and wide! This both promotes our beautiful region and supports the local business owners in our community.
If you would like to know more about how you can contribute to a positive community sentiment, drop in to one of our three visitor information centres in Bundaberg, Gin Gin or Childers and chat to the team about the wonderful things to do and see in the region.
Yours in tourism,
Katherine Reid, CEO
PS: If there are other things you would like to see in this column about tourism – let us know on our corporate Facebook page at www.facebook.com/bundabergtourism
