Bendigo Region

From October 2023-March 2024, we partnered with Bendigo Regional Tourism and its constituent Councils to develop a Destination Management Plan (DMP) and five Local Area Action Plans (LAAPs).

 

The Brief

Bendigo Regional Tourism was supported by the Victorian State Government in developing a Destination Management Plan for the greater Bendigo Tourism Region.

The ambition for this project was to inspire and unite the region's stakeholders through a shared regional vision for tourism, and to identify opportunities across supply, demand, industry and experience development, advocacy, and workforce planning with clear measures of success - at a regional, and local level.

It's important to note that this DMP, and its related LAAPs, were being developed as discussions were being had with regional stakeholders and State Government around the regional tourism restructuring process that was occurring across the state.

The DMP will be used by Bendigo Regional Tourism (and the newly established Visitor Economy Partnership for Central Victoria) to guide their annual workplan and act as an advocacy tool to attract investment for identified priority projects across the region.

The LAAPs are a localised and aligned strategic plan, that highlights the local area opportunities for tourism, and link seamlessly into the DMP. This will help support a more effective and collaborative approach to tourism and create efficiencies in local investment into the sector to accelerate outcomes. Councils can also use it to create efficiencies in their work plan, and advocate for funding for strategic tourism priority projects.

 

 

Our Approach

 

Strategic Listening & Desktop Analysis

We understand that no destination planning project is the same.

The Bendigo tourism region as defined by the Victorian State Government, encompasses the City fo Greater Bendigo, Loddon Shire Council, Mount Alexander Shire Council, and Central Goldfields Shire Council.

Each council area is incredibly unique - there were some similarities and many inconsistencies across each of the Councils as it related to geographic size, rate payer base, systemic community and environmental issues, in addition to longstanding beliefs on the concept of tourism, and it's value to their part of the region.

Understanding these facts, issues and beliefs via a mixed methodology strategic listening approach with cultural, environmental, community and economic stakeholders was the very first step to being able to develop an accurate lay of the land and collective ambition for tourism.

 

Place-Based Planning

To develop a vision for tourism in the Bendigo Region and a genuine place-based plan to underpin the vision, a united understanding and definition of ‘place’ was first determined.

Through considered engagement we acknowledged and outlined the cultural, natural and community assets to clearly articulate the place DNA of the whole region, of which sustainable tourism potential must aim to elevate, regenerate and protect.

 

Connecting the Dots

The DMP connects the dots between stakeholder priorities at a local, regional, state and national level to optimise resources, improve outcomes, reduce and mitigate risk, and to unite stakeholders in the delivery of positive outcomes for tourism.

The City of Bendigo is an incredibly mature and central business hub for the whole Bendigo Tourism Region. This creates many advantages for the tourism proposition, especially when it comes to investment in economic and community infrastructure that can be leveraged to attract and service visitors.

As such, many economic development plans, environmental and climate active strategies, and project investment pipelines were already established, and so connecting the dots between the visitor economy and the existing potential via community, environmental and economic stakeholders for the region, and for each Council area was a priority to ensure opportunities and resource efficiencies could be realised.

 

Embedding Agility within the DMP & LAAPs

The DMP is governed by a vision for tourism which will be achieved through agreed priorities for action, and has purposefully been designed to be agile, to remain a relevant framework throughout the entirety of its lifespan and beyond, regardless of the governance structure that it is managed under.

Specific governance actions and scaffolds we embedded in the Plan to enable this agility include:

• Plan Governance Principles & Management Framework - to guide how the plan will be resourced, activated, measured, reported, and updated.
•  Tourism Impact Measurement Strategy - to invest in strategic, relevant, and dynamic curation of insights and indicators to measure the full value of tourism for the region in alignment with the ambitions, to be used as a communication tool to attract investment into the sector and enable an agile response to destination planning.
• Funding Strategy - A strategic and ongoing approach to applying for capital to execute the actions with the DMP
• Agile Project Scoping Framework - to ensure that any new projects or priorities that are proposed are worked through the scoping framework for alignment with the regional vision, ambition and current priorities set. This ensures the integrity of the priority process when determining investment in tourism opportunities.
• Plan Engagement & Communication Framework - ongoing communication with tourism and other regional stakeholders to ensure the purpose of the DMP remains transparent, and effective in influencing policy and investment for the sector in an agile way.

 

Celebrating Success

In addition to delivering a future-forward document that is embedded with sustainable tourism principles, and has been inspired by many leading national and global approaches to destination planning, the DMP and LAAPs needed to celebrate the current capacity of the region to deliver tourism opportunities that already align with the regional ambition.

Therefore, we purposely developed the DMP and LAAPs to highlight the region's community, tourism, cultural and economic stakeholders demonstrated experience in working in collaboration to achieve positive tourism outcomes for the Region.

 

The Final DMP & LAAPs

The complete (100pg) DMP is currently unavailable for public consumption, however, Bendigo Regional Tourism has developed the below Executive Summary snapshot that outlines some of the key areas of the DMP.

Local Government stakeholders are currently endorsing the LAAPs.