Limestone Coast tourism has remained strong following the Christmas and New Year peak.
Limestone Coast Local Government Association (LCLGA) statistics revealed tourist numbers hit just over 25,000 over the holiday season and The Chamber vice president Michael Kosch discussed how tourism was currently faring in the region.
“From our perspective, regional tourism has remained strong through the back end of calendar year 2022 and then into January was outstanding,” Mr Kosch said.
“Naturally you see those two slow weeks for tourism and visitor business but the weekends over the last couple of weeks have really been quite strong for us, which is a good sign of how you are going when you start to see people moving around.
“Not just the business people and the corporates that stay in tourism businesses and use tourism businesses, but when you are also seeing that on the weekends as well, that is a good sign that people are still on the move.”
Mr Kosch believed people were lingering for longer than previous years due to some catch-up occurring since COVID, people choosing to explore the regions and Riverland flooding.
“There is this great trend in regional tourism where people are getting out and seeing the regions more often,” he said.
“Through the tragedies of what happened in the Riverland, that was a big driver of tourism, we saw that through Robe and those areas that had a massive January.
“And places like Mount Gambier that experienced what may well be a record tourism month.”
Mr Kosch said international travel had not fully rebounded yet, with some people starting to travel again while others were more reluctant to get back on planes.
“You have got issues of convenience around flights, price of flights and then just the general travel disruption of long queues in airports and understaffed airlines, so they are all issues that are still a deterrent for people travelling overseas,” he said.
Looking ahead, Mr Kosch said the forward outlook until the middle of the year remained very positive.
“We are seeing good amounts of coach group travel and group bookings, we have got the return of events like Generations in Jazz in May which is the first time since 2019, so that is another big chunk of business that we get into the town,” he said.
“All of those things are really positive in the outlook at least in the short term, it is fair to say the general economic headwinds and the uncertainly about what’s going on and the return of international travel, it is very difficult to forecast too far in advance how your trading is going to be.”
