South Australian Tourism Commission

Our Approach

We treated the project as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the long-term direction of tourism in South Australia.

We were clear from the very beginning that this couldn’t be a single template rolled out thirteen times. Every region deserved a plan that reflected its own community, its own opportunities and its own sense of place.

Equally, thirteen unconnected plans would have missed the larger opportunity in front of us: to understand South Australia’s tourism as one connected system, and to grow it that way. Holding both of those things at once - deep local relevance and genuine statewide coherence - became the heart of the work.

 

Project Scope

Over twenty-two months, we led the strategic delivery of all thirteen plans - shaping the approach, guiding the analysis, and designing and facilitating the engagement that brought each plan to life.

We worked hand in hand with the SATC, who provided dedicated project management, quality assurance, stakeholder and partner relations, stage sign-off, quality control and in-house design.

Our twelve Regional Tourism Organisations were also key partners in the project, whose local knowledge and on-the-ground presence were essential to earning each community’s confidence. An early inception workshop brought everyone together around shared values, clear roles and honest expectations, and that gave the whole program a foundation of trust that held steady even as people and circumstances changed along the way.

We were also fortunate to partner with Flinders University, embedding tourism students within our team to lift our delivery capacity while giving the next generation of practitioners a real project to learn from.

A strong partnership

We led the strategic delivery of the DMPs for SATC, designing the methodology and leading the strategic analysis, stakeholder engagement and development of each of the 13 DMPs.

SATC provided dedicated project management, co-design of the DMP framework, stakeholder and partner relations, stage sign-off, quality control and in-house design.

The twelve Regional Tourism Organisations (RTOs) were essential partners, providing in-region administrative support, convening engagement workshops and contributing local context, content, feedback and sign-off.

We also partnered with Flinders University to embed tourism students in our consulting team, adding delivery capacity while creating a reciprocal learning opportunity.

Listening deeply, and widely

Deep listening sits at the centre of everything we do, and it mattered here more than ever. Across the thirteen regions we engaged more than 2,100 people through in-depth interviews, regional workshops, and community and industry surveys.

We designed that engagement to be genuinely inclusive - plain-language materials, accessible venues, flexible session times, online options, and a deliberate effort to hear from young people - because a plan is only ever as strong as the range of perspectives that shape it.

Just as importantly, we listened well beyond the tourism sector, sitting down with the agencies responsible for planning, housing, transport, investment, environment, water and land management. Tourism doesn’t happen in isolation, and neither should the plans that guide it.

The Tourism Collective listened carefully, tested assumptions and translated complex regional priorities into a clear and practical framework. The engagement was thorough, the process well organised, and it has given us a strong foundation for implementation.

Kelly Tape, Regional Tourism Manager — Regional Development Australia Eyre Peninsula

 

One framework, thirteen places

To hold local relevance and statewide consistency together, we co-created a single planning framework with the Commission that could be interpreted through each region’s own context. It gave every plan a clear line of sight to the South Australian Tourism Plan 2030, and made it possible to govern, measure and advocate across all thirteen regions as one — while still leaving each community firmly in the driver’s seat of its own priorities and ownership.

The Framework has made cross-agency collaboration noticeably easier. The flexibility to reshape priorities as circumstances change, without losing the integrity of the Plan, is something previous plans didn’t offer.

Mim Ward, CEO — SA’s Mid North and Yorke Tourism Zone

 

Plans built to be implemented

Rather than a list of broad objectives, each plan is organised around prioritised, real projects - each with a clear purpose, an early sense of who might help deliver it, and an understanding of where it sits in the bigger picture. It makes collaboration obvious, creates accountability, and gives every region an agile pipeline of work that can flex as priorities and resources shift over time.

Stewardship, not ownership

We deliberately developed these DMPs to help tourism evolve through a destination stewardship lens. Rather than writing a plan for a single organisation to carry alone, we framed each one around shared stewardship, recognising the simple reality that no one organisation delivers tourism outcomes on its own. That shared sense of responsibility spreads ownership among the many partners who shape a place, and it makes the plans far more resilient to staff changes, funding changes, and external shocks that regional tourism inevitably faces.