Planning For Tourism

Experience has shown that achieving balanced tourism growth and to sustain a thriving tourism industry requires strategic planning. This often requires substantial input from local government, working collaboratively with tourism operators.

In many areas tourism has been traditionally characterised by ad hoc methods, usually focussed on marketing, and often just on advertising. This is often driven by the local businesses community, who just want to get out there and ‘promote’.

This invariably results in marketing activities undertaken without adequate research and target marketing, and that fail to incorporate a system to evaluate performance. The promotion is often undertaken with no or little regard for community aspirations, without an assessment of the assets and experiences available, or consideration about the adequacy of local services and infrastructure. Visitors may visit the area once, but may never return again, and may even spread negative publicity.

Depending on the importance of tourism to the local economy, or its potential for development, councils can choose to recognise the industry and promote its development in any of the following ways:

1. Development of a Council Tourism Policy,
2. Incorporating tourism into Council’s Corporate Plan (the corporate plan is council’s principal policy document. Its purpose is to provide the strategic direction for the body, as well as for the municipal community),
3. Identify tourism in Council’s Municipal Strategic Statement and Planning Scheme (The Municipal Strategic Statement effectively forms the basis of a council’s planning scheme, with planning decisions being made within the context of how a planning application achieves the objectives of the Municipal Strategic Statement and associated strategic objectives of a municipality),
4. Incorporate tourism in Council’s Land Use Strategy Plan (This provides a detailed vision about the future of the municipality and complements the corporate plan. Land use strategy plans play an increasingly important role in the development approval decisions made by councils),
5. Incorporate tourism into the Economic Development Strategy,
6. Preparation of a Tourism Development Strategy (this enables a council to set its own agenda as to how the municipality or region can be developed and promoted as a tourism destination)

Click here to read more about developing a Council tourism policy

Click here to read more about developing a Tourism Development Plan

Click here (796 kb) to access Tourism Victoria’s Investment and Planning Guidelines

Click here (150 kb) to learn more about the Local Government Pathway to Sustainable Tourism Workshop program, which has been developed to assist local councils to better understand and plan for tourism development