Central Highlands Development Corporation

There was a gathering at CHDC's Emerald office last Tuesday, 8 October, that was quite remarkable. For the first time in a long time, tourism operators from across the whole region got together to talk tourism.

It was the second engagement session with consultants Linda Tillman and Jayne Jennings from the Tillma Group. We have been working with them to deliver our region a quality tourism and events strategy, focusing our attention on 2020 - 2023.

The interest in this second engagement session, where the industry could discuss and workshop some of the ideas for the strategy, came from Jayne and Linda's four days in the Central Highlands back in August. Between them, Jayne and Linda pretty much covered the whole region and its tourism offerings, meeting with operators and chatting with other tourists along the way.

This engagement process has been widespread. Jayne and Linda have been working with Central Highlands Regional Council staff and councilors; our Regional Tourism Organisation Capricorn Enterprise; Tourism & Events Queensland; Queensland Tourism Industry Council; and many others they did not manage to meet on their previous visit.

 

From the Tillma Group's thorough research, a Gaps Analysis Paper was produced. It was this document that we were all discussing - and some may say arguing - last week. This robust debate was fantastic and provided a lot of insight into the passion for this process. We were all able to agree on some key priorities to take forward to the next stages of producing our Tourism and Events Strategy. It is too early to decide where we are at with the key priorities, suffice to say that when we see the first draft in the coming weeks, we will be engaged in more discussion. 

When we started this process, the consultants were informed that their challenge would be to deliver a strategy we could achieve, as far too many in the past were unattainable and just sat on a shelf. We all know that to implement any strategy, we will need to keep up the industry engagement and collaboration, improve communication and strive for more consistent tourism product and development.

We will be going over drafts in the coming weeks, and will launch the final product at our Tourism and Events Forum on Wednesday, 27 November. Registrations for this event will open soon.

Please keep the conversations going and contact me if you would like to have any input. 

Thank you to the Local Buying Foundation for its support of the Central Highlands Tourism and Events Strategy 2020 - 2023.