Clarence Wins Gold
Clarence Wins Gold
Date: September 6 2012 (12:00am)
The Clarence won the Gold Award for Visitor Services at the North Coast Tourism Awards held on the 1st September at Port Macquarie. Since the revival of this award in 2010, the Clarence has received 2 Gold’s and Silver in this category.
“We were thrilled that Clarence River Tourism won gold at the North Coast Tourism Awards in the category of Visitor Information and Services” said Jenny Massie, Manager who collected the award in Port Macquarie on Sat night.
“This award recognises excellence for the work we have done over the past 12 months in visitor information, destination marketing and product development including some major projects.
Our consistent marketing of the Clarence has contributed to a 9.4% increase in visitor nights, significantly higher than the state of NSW, which had a 3.5% increase during the year. The Clarence has 922,000 visitors spending an estimated $261 million each year.”
Clarence tourism website had over 85,000 unique visitors, an increase of 23% on the previous year. The visitor centres at Grafton and Maclean provided services to 138,766 visitors during the year.
Destination marketing for the Clarence, River of Adventure including production of a Sailing and Cruising guide for the lower Clarence; a very successful on-line marketing campaign that received over 4 million page impressions and a promo box on Yahoo home page for 8 days that received 1,648 click throughs; other marketing initiatives that leveraged over $700,000 worth of promotion for the Clarence with 21 editorial features published across a range of targeted media. Thanks to our cooperative partners including the Chambers of Commerce, Council and industry for their support.
Product development – Wooli Minnie Water Tourism project - we entered into a partnership with NPWS to assist with the establishment of new visitor experiences (in consultation with local stakeholders) designed to meet a growing nature based market. Thanks to NPWS for their support.
The Board and staff of Clarence River Tourism are honoured to bring another prestigious tourism award home to the Clarence Valley.
