Limestone Coast accommodation providers are experiencing a mixed response to last week’s second round of the SA Tourism Commission’s Great State Vouchers.
The vouchers – which offered $100 for use at participating CBD and North Adelaide stays and $50 to spend on regional and suburban accommodation – were snapped up in record time, with almost 75,000 vouchers being allocated in just 39 minutes last week.
Tom Kosch, whose family operates Commodore on the Park, Delgattie Estate and The Henty, all in Mount Gambier, said the venues were experiencing a slow start to the voucher release.
“We have really only seen three at The Henty and three at the Commodore since bookings became available,” he said. “While it’s been a good thing for some, I’m unsure what others have seen around the town.”
Mr Kosch said he hoped the voucher bookings would build on what had been a busy tourist season in the region. “What we have seen is a particularly good tourist season, there has been a huge amount of people who have come through Mount Gambier since the early part of Christmas week until now,” he said.
“Hopefully the vouchers will be used for future trade right through January. “We would hope to pick up some more bookings, I am really unsure as to what we might see. “However, we think the promotion has been a positive one and really encouraged people to get out and see SA as a whole.”
The travel vouchers have proved a huge hit with Adelaide residents looking for a seaside escape to Beachport.
Bonnies of Beachport, which offers six apartments, is booked out until the end of January, with reservations starting to fill through to February and March. Bookings manager Paul Brookshaw said the offer was a great initiative.
“We have had a lot of interest and are getting a lot of bookings too,” he said. “The phone started on Thursday and it has not stopped yet. We have got a good many, all Adelaide bookings.”
Mr Brookshaw said the visitors were wanting to start using the bookings straight away and he was having to push them back into February and some into March. “With COVID at the moment, tourism is upside down. We are normally quiet in winter and start from spring and then from Christmas we are totally booked out,” he said.
“Because of COVID this year we have been strong all the way through. From our point of view, this is like a little bonus with the voucher system.”
Millicent Hillview Caravan Park owner-manager Allan Withers said he was already starting to see bookings flow in. “We have had a few bookings from it, we had four in the first few days,” he said.
“Generally, it’s not too bad, we are in round two of the vouchers now, during round one we got a couple from it, so this one is looking a bit stronger. “It certainly fills in those days that we need to have booked, so it’s working out quite good.”
Mr Withers said he hoped the bookings would continue to roll in once school returned at the end of January. “We are still in the early stages, I hope to get a few more as time goes on,” he said. “I think people will use them after school goes back. “It’s money in their pocket, if they are thinking about having a holiday then now is the time to do it.”
South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) chief executive Rodney Harrex said it was a terrific boost for tourism operators across South Australia.
“Our southaustralia.com website experienced huge demand – at one point, the peak load recorded 112,000 requests per minute – which is 1900 people per second wanting information about how to register.
Nearly 15,000 vouchers were out the door in the first 10 minutes,” Mr Harrex said. “In the first hour of the program, there were 3.1 million requests to southaustralia.com – a very strong indication the vouchers were in high demand and South Australians are keen to support our state’s tourism sector.”
The SATC also recorded more than 250,000 unique users on both southaustralia.com and the voucher registration portal – considerably higher than the total visits for when the first voucher round was launched last October (total of 182,000 users).
“Like in our first round of vouchers, the allocations were spread across the CBD and regional SA. In total, 26,536 were secured for regional and metropolitan SA and 47,883 vouchers were designated to the CBD and North Adelaide. Several thousand of these were snapped up by interstate visitors – which, as we know, are valuable travellers to our state,” Mr Harrex said.
“The outstanding result means millions of dollars will be injected in accommodation providers across the state – and that translates to jobs, more people spending money in hotels and restaurants and more visitors to our regions.
“While we did receive some feedback that people were having difficulty securing a voucher and I do apologise to those who did not receive a voucher, we should acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of people were trying to log in for 75,000 vouchers.”
