TOURISM AWARDS EVENT FEATURE
PORT ARTHUR HISTORIC SITE
Losing nearly its entire clientele during the Covid-19 shutdowns was, as expected, a huge blow for Tasmania’s premier tourist attraction. However it did give the Port Arthur Historic Site the chance to reflect on its entire operation, and it is now back with a bang. W hen domestic and international visitors account for more than 90 per cent of your numbers, suddenly not having them flow the doors for an extended period is a catastrophic outcome. So for the Port Arthur Historic Site, when Tasmania’s borders shut during Covid it left Australia’s most intact and evocative convict site in limbo. But the silver lining for Anne McVilly, Director Tourism Operations at Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority, was it provided an opportunity – albeit an inconvenient one - to run the ruler over every aspect of the business. “It quite shocked us because we’d been growing and growing, visitors to Tasmania were growing and we were on this trajectory of upward financial graphs and visitor graphs and we were going really well and winning awards,” McVilly says. “But when no visitors are coming and then your only market is Tasmania, which pre Covid was only seven per cent of our business, it was extremely difficult.
business, cruise ships were 20 per cent. So we lost all that and only had the Tasmanian market. It was tough, but it was really good to give Tasmanians the chance to come back and have the place to themselves sometimes and then become ambassadors, and sort of talk about us when they had visiting friends and relatives come back when borders did reopen. It was really good to look at our business, made us really understand what worked and what didn’t work.” The ‘consolidation’ period was put to good use by McVilly and her team, with the Port Arthur Historic Site reaffirming its status as the pinnacle of Tasmanian attractions and returning to its awards winning ways. At this year’s Tasmanian Tourism Awards, the site took home gold in the Major Tourist Attraction category. The win came as a bit of a surprise for McVilly, despite the accolades of previous years. “With the Tourism Awards, a lot is how you write your submission and you don’t know who you’re up against. We put our best foot forward… but it came as a shock that we won, we weren’t expecting to win at all. We had a year off from the awards, which was good to just consolidate and try and refocus after the Covid shutdown and with new markets coming and changing, but it was really good to be back. We
“International [visitation] was 25 per cent of our
Tasmanian Hospitality Review 44 Dec/Jan Edition
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