AN ambitious strategy to add more than $60 million to the Riverland visitor economy by 2025 was unveiled by the South Australian Tourism Commission (SATC) recently.
The South Australian Regional Visitor Strategy 2025 (RVS), released by the SATC earlier this month, outlines priority areas and growth targets for the state’s 11 tourism regions as they deal with the impacts of COVID-19.
RVS steering committee chair Helen Edwards said the Riverland faced the challenge of both growing visitor numbers and increasing the average length of stay.
“Often, we go to those places that are well known in regions, and I don’t think that’s any different in the region,” she said.
“By developing new experiences, particularly family-friendly, soft adventure, water-based and nature experiences, it will just fit perfectly with people wanting to get back in touch with nature.”
Ms Edwards, who grew up in Berri, said the Murray River was a “valuable asset” to the region.
“While people do use it for adventure and water sports, there is so much about the river that is peaceful and quiet,” she said.
“Experiences around that, and the region’s growing reputation for food and beverages and plans to upgrade accommodation and river infrastructure, will draw people to the Riverland in greater numbers, but also space them out across the region.
“I have great memories of camping at Katarapko Creek and learning to swim in the Murray.
“I think it just makes people remember the great things in life, and that’s wonderful on a holiday.”
Destination Riverland general manager Ben Patten said the target of growing the visitor spend from $183 million to $247 million by 2025 was “challenging but realistic”.
“The decline that we’ve seen in our visitor economy is not as severe as other regions in SA, so we are still coming from a good base,” he said.
“The key to it is alignment between the RVS and our own Riverland Tourism Plan (RTP).
“That $247 million by 2025 is actually in line with the $317 million target by 2030 that our plan refers to.”
Mr Patten said the RVS would work “hand in hand” with the RTP.
“If you were to lay both documents side by side the synergy is very clear and that was done on purpose,” he said.
“We were fortunate because we did most of that work last year… and then in the latter parts of last year SATC came to the region and through that, because we had most of the contents for the RTP 2030, most of that fed back into the Regional Visitor Strategy and vice versa.
“We as a region are just going through a process to realign what the peak tourism body does and how it is supported by local government, State Government and RDA, and that process is under way right now.”