Western Australia’s tourism and hospitality business will receive a welcome boost this summer as the state hosts a series of major events.
Western Australia’s tourism and hospitality business will receive a welcome boost this summer as the state hosts a series of major events.
A number of high-profile national and international events will be held in Perth over the 2006-07 summer, starting this week with the World Ultimate Club Championships and the Red Bull Air Race and Festival.
Accommodation across the city this weekend is completely booked out.
Also this coming weekend, Fremantle will host the Audi Etchells World Championships, billed as a re-match of the 1983 America’s Cup between John Bertrand and Dennis Conner; until Mr Conner withdrew from the event late last week citing health reasons.
Eight major events being held over the next three months are expected to inject more than $25 million into the state’s economy, and beam images of Perth and WA across millions of television screens in Tourism Western Australia’s key markets around the world.
EventsCorp executive director David Etherton said major events were an important contributor to the state’s $4 billion tourism industry, with this year’s calendar one of the most exciting yet.
He said Perth’s success in winning bids to host major events relied on the city’s natural competitive advantage, particularly for outdoor and nature-based events.
“It’s all about the venue and the location,” Mr Etherton told WA Business News.
“We think that there were two main reasons why we won the Red Bull Air Race. One is the fantastic river and the beautiful weather we’ve got, and second was the venue of Langley Park air field.”
Mr Etherton said that, although the city’s 100 per cent hotel occupancy rate this weekend was good for hotel owners, the potential risk for accommodation bottlenecks existed, particularly when two events occurred concurrently.
“With Perth having very high occupancy rates at the moment, we can definitely do with some more hotel rooms,” he said.
Mr Etherton is confident that the problem of accommodation shortages at peak times was being addressed, with around $1 billion worth of accommodation currently being planned for WA.
In mid-December, Perth will transform into ‘cricket city’, with 10 days of cricket events forming the ‘festival of cricket’ around the Third Ashes Test Match at the WACA ground.
Tourism WA, through EventsCorp, has partnered up with the WACA to develop strategic marketing activities for the Ashes series, facilitating travel trade alliances and co-operative marketing activities to assist tourism outcomes.