Celebrating Victoria's Top Tourism Towns
Top Tourism Town Awards recognise and celebrate towns that offer amazing visitor experiences.
This year is the first time Victoria has participated in the Top Tourism Towns Awards, and we are thrilled that 22 towns across Victoria chose to enter.
These awards are an opportunity to showcase the value of tourism to towns and communities across Australia and celebrate the diversity and outstanding regional destinations Australia has to offer.
For the first time the Top Tourism Town Awards will also be included in the Australian Tourism Awards. So not only will towns be competing at a state level, the Gold winner in each state will judged at a national level and recognised as the Top Tourism Town in Australia.
The Top Tourism Town Awards recognise and reward towns that:
- Demonstrate a strong commitment and encourage tourism and increased visitation to their destination
- Offer an excellent visitor experience, and
- Exhibit collaboration between tourism operators, local businesses and the community as they work together to make their town the best destination it can be
Submissions from entrants have been through a judging process, and are now open to public voting. The judges score and the consumer vote will then be combined to determine the winners.
Public voting is an ENORMOUS opportunity for entrants to encourage their community, their visitors and their followers to VOTE for them.
Towns who actively promote voting are not only increasing their chances of winning the award, they promoting and reminding their locals, their visitors and potential visitors what a great place their town is to visit – and that can only be good for their visitor economy.
Congratulations to the following towns who are finalist in the Victorian Top Tourism Town Awards (VOTE NOW):
- Aireys Inlet
- Apollo Bay
- Avoca
- Ballarat
- Beaufort
- Bendigo
- Dromana
- Dunkeld
- Fingal
- Frankston
- Great Western
- Halls Gap
- Heathcote
- Jamieson
- Lakes Entrance
- Mallacoota
- Nagambie
- Paynesville
- Port Fairy
- San Remo
- Swan Hill
- Timboon
All the very best to all entrants in the 2021 Top Tourism Town Awards.
Our founder, Alison McDowell has been a judge for the Victorian Tourism Awards since 2015, and a judge for the Victorian Top Tourism Town Awards since 2021.
What do resilient businesses do differently?
Why did some businesses bounce back more quickly after Victoria’s year of double disasters? What did these businesses do differently?
Victoria University and Victorian Tourism Industry Council collaborated to investigate the impacts of crises on the Victorian visitor economy to develop strategies to help the industry build resilience to future crises and shocks.
So why did some businesses fair better during 2020 the year of double disasters – bushfire and pandemic? What did they do differently? The report identified that the most resilient businesses had strengths in planning, were connected and collaborated – working on their business before the double disasters put them in good stead to the resilient.
We believe the learnings from this report can be adapted to any business and any industry, and provide us all with an opportunity to build resilience in our own businesses and industries.
The top-line learnings from the report were:
Resilient businesses are;
- Accredited
- Connected and Collaborate
- Technology users
- Planners
- Leaders
Resilient destinations have:
- Strategic Tourism plans
- Collaborative leadership
- Regulatory support
- Stakeholder engagement & Communication
Beneath these findings it was also identified that businesses and destinations that had a Risk Analysis within their suit of business planning tools where more likely to bounce back more quickly. While no one would have considered a pandemic as a risk, having considered other risks to their business and how to manage these was a learned skill that these businesses were able to quickly adapt to the pandemic.
It should also be noted that businesses who had previously entered the Tourism Awards were more agile, resilient and also bounced back more quickly than other businesses - another testament to businesses who have business and marketing plans in place were better prepared, able to pivot and weather the storm.
We would also suggest that successful brands didn't ‘go dark’ during 2020 and maintained relationships with their customers, and increased their share of voice in the market will result in bouncing back faster. We know that brands who go dark loose share of voice in market, and their space is taken up by competitors. The result - brands that go dark are slower to recover and often never really catch up. On the other hand brands that maintain or grow their share of voice in market during difficult times are more likely to thrive in sales and profit growth.
If you’d like to learn more, click on the link to the report. Or if you would like to chat though your business resilience and how we can help you give Ali a call on 0411 135 317 or email alison@roadmapstrategy.com.au
Victoria University - Building The Resilience of Tourism Destinations to Disasters:
The 2020 Victorian Bushfires and COVID-19 Pandemic - April 2021
https://www.vu.edu.au/sites/default/files/tourism-resilience-report.pdf