Tourism Tasmania
Sarah Clark
As we head into the cooler months, I want to take a moment to celebrate the fact we just had our strongest summer for tourism yet. Our quarterly results from the Tasmanian Visitor Survey showed a record number of visitors and nights for December 2024 to February 2025. Visitor spend was also up by 4.6 per cent on the previous summer, totalling $1.368 billion for the three months. This is a huge win for our tourism, hospitality and accommodation sectors, and a reminder that we all play a vital part in Tasmania’s visitor economy. Collectively we welcomed 453,600 visitors, with our accommodation providers servicing a record of 4.43 million visitor nights in just three months across summer. The message is clear that Tasmania is a desirable holiday destination, with our longstanding Come Down For Air and Off Season campaigns successfully building strong and lasting connections with Australians, inspiring travellers to visit all corners of our state. In March, I had the pleasure of launching this year’s Off Season alongside the Premier. The campaign is again encouraging Australians to reimagine their winter holidays and ‘become a winter person’ in Tasmania. There’s lots of ways for visitors to embrace winter this year, and it’s exciting to see Dark Mofo returning in full swing. With the campaign launched earlier than ever,
and a big Dark Mofo program on the horizon, we saw in March that forward accommodation bookings for June were up by 10 per cent. Speaking of Dark Mofo, we at Tourism Tasmania are excited to be partnering with guest chef Niyati Rao at the festival’s staple foodie event Winter Feast. An award-winning chef from Mumbai, Niyati will collaborate with Craig Will from Stillwater in a fusion of Indian and Tasmanian flavours. India is an emerging visitor market for Tasmania, so we look forward to highlighting this collaboration with Indian travel media to grow awareness of Tasmania. We are also very excited to be working with Tasmanian chef Lilly Trewartha to produce an online content series in partnership with global travel platform Adventure.com. Lilly and the Adventure.com team will be heading around the state on a ‘gastronomic road trip’, documenting their visit to producers on the north west Tasting Trail, Lobster Shack on the east coast, Timbre Kitchen, Harvest Market and Mudbar in the north, and Palawa Kipli in the south of the state. It’s been a positive start to the year for our industry, and I feel we’re only just getting started. I also want to thank Dave Noonan from THA for joining me in presenting to industry at our Visitor Economy Regional Gatherings. I wish everyone a happy and productive time as we head into the Off Season.
45 Tasmanian Hospitality Review Apr/May Edition
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