Visit Canberra has launched an action plan focussing on immediate steps to be taken to recover Canberra’s visitor economy over the next 18 Months.
Visit Canberra said its 2022 Action Plan for Recovery contained goals for recovery from now until June 2022, and the actions that would support it.
“The events of 2020 had a significant effect on the ACT’s visitor economy,” Visit Canberra said.
“Whilst we continue to work toward long-term recovery, our focus is on the activities that will make a difference over the next 18 months,” it said.
“The Action Plan is intended to be a living document and will be regularly updated to ensure it remains relevant to our industry.”
Visit Canberra said its aspirational goal was a visitor economy of $2.5 billion in domestic visitor spend by the end of June next year.
The Agency said achieving its goal would depend upon limited restrictions to domestic travel and effective containment of outbreaks in hotspot areas.
“It will also rely on a reasonable balance of business, leisure and VFR [visiting friends and relatives] travel to the ACT,” it said.
“[The goal] assumes that the ACT will increase its current share of the domestic tourism market.”
It said the June 2022 goal also excluded any overnight expenditure from international visitors, given the current uncertainty around the reopening of international borders.
Visit Canberra said tourism was critical to economic recovery, with every $152,000 spent by visitors creating a job for a Canberra resident.
It said recently commissioned research found there were many reasons to be positive about Canberra’s prospects for recovery, including that Australians had a more confident economic outlook; households had been saving during the pandemic; and domestic travel was increasingly seen as safe.
Visit Canberra’s two-page Action Plan can be accessed at this PS News link.
