Destination: South Australia

Executive Summary

Glenelg is South Australia’s most popular coastal tourism destination; and has been for 150 years.

Today’s fresh ‘face’ of Glenelg and its current tourism experience has evolved as part of continuous change since 1997. A decade of significant redevelopment and rejuvenation will have been completed by 2007, presenting a raft of new challenges in key tourism marketing, destination management and product development areas.

While Glenelg will continue to prosper as a popular coastal gathering and meeting place, this does not guarantee an automatically profitable and/or sustainable tourism industry. Holdfast Bay has growing competition from other Adelaide metropolitan and nearby regional coastal destinations. To maintain its competitive advantage, Glenelg in particular must deliver an excellent visitor experience, always exceeding traditional expectations.

The region’s ultimate tourism success hinges on strong stakeholder partnerships between the State Government, primarily through the SA Tourism Commission; the City of Holdfast Bay; the accommodation, transport, attractions and hospitality sectors of the tourism industry within Glenelg and Holdfast Bay; plus dozens of nearby precinct traders who serve both the local community as well as visitors.

The 2006-2009 Tourism Directions Plan aims to provide realistic and commercially astute frameworks to encourage willing growth and cohesion between these diverse stakeholder groups. Further, this Plan’s success will be strongly influenced by the ability to achieve three fundamental outcomes :

1. To attract more staying visitors – Glenelg currently is primarily a ‘day tripper’ destination; for sustained profitability this status must improve;

2. With industry, gain genuine willingness to create a greater spirit of cooperation and shared responsibility for tourism development, promotion and management; and

3. With the host community, gain a greater level of residents’ acceptance that they live within a prime tourism location, which requires locals to share and understand visitor impacts as well as to facilitate efforts to continually improve tourism services, facilities and amenities.

Glenelg faces a range of serious industry development, product development and marketing issues. Accordingly, this Plan seeks to achieve multiple and diverse results via key actions including to:

• Undertake ‘gap analysis’ consultation and reviews to identify possible new tourism products.
• Prepare a ‘Tourism Impact Model’ for the City of Holdfast Bay to establish the economic, social and cultural benefits of tourism to the general and business communities.
• Prepare a Holdfast Bay coastal tourism masterplan with corresponding destination development strategies.
• Establish the ‘Glenelg Tourism Forum’ as a solid local industry body to identify and progress local tourism issues and initiatives.
• Aim for the local restaurant and café sector to adopt a higher profile in the tourism industry.
• Provide increased liaison, information and product support to the Glenelg Visitor Information Centre.
• Develop new Council policies for prestigious national and international groups to showcase Glenelg’s foreshore location.
• Provide stronger marketing support to the conference and business tourism sector.
• Increase marketing efforts to the Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) sector.

The 2006 – 2009 Tourism Directions Plan picks up and continues with many important marketing, product development and research features of the previous City of Holdfast Bay 2001 – 2004 Tourism Plan. However, the new plan is far more ambitious in its pursuit of bringing the local tourism industry together to collectively and successfully move forward.

This plan is bold and demanding. It ensures that the region’s strategic and long-term tourism issues are identified and addressed.

A dynamic new tourism environment has been created within Holdfast Bay, bringing with it a range of new prospects and opportunities. The 2006 – 2009 Tourism Directions Plan provides a blueprint for how these prospects can be converted into sustainable, first-class tourism experiences.