5000 get work on New Year’s Eve visitors pour cash into region’s coffers

Andrew Mathieson
NEW Year’s functions are proving to be a cash windfall to the Geelong region, new figures reveal.
But a lack of accommodation to house the growing numbers could be driving them away, according to one of its major operators.
New Year on the Waterfront director Rick Clingan said the event attracted close to 4000 partygoers annually to Steampacket Gardens.
Numbers were down by a few hundred on past years and he was concerned many shunned Geelong this New Year’s Eve when motels, pubs and camping sites were booked out.
“We fielded a number of calls from people who could not find anywhere to stay,” Mr Clingan said.
“For all we know, there may be people not coming because they couldn’t get a motel.”
Recent data collected over the previous two years had found that 76 per cent of revellers at the Geelong waterfront party were from outside the region.
Visitors from interstate joined others from the Goulburn Valley, Murray, Mallee, Wimmera and Gippsland communities.
Others came from Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, snubbing their local celebrations in favour of Geelong.
Mr Clingan said New Year on the Waterfront organisers have since targeted their marketing towards regional Victoria from the latest research.
“We always knew, even when it was New Years by the Pier, there was a very strong regional presence,” he said.
“What we previously did with our own market research was to postcode people, with our staff walking along the queue with clipboards and asking anybody who was willing to offer such information.”
Geelong Otway Tourism executive director Roger Grant said the visitor numbers for an iconic Geelong event “doesn’t surprise me at all”.
Mr Grant attended the Falls Festival over the holiday period, joking to an Independent staffer attending that he could be the oldest patron at the event.
He said both direct and indirect expenditure at Australia’s leading music festival brought more than $27 million into the region.
On-site expenditure at the Lorne event was about $2.2 million.
Mr Grant said talking to international media from several music publications rated Falls as “one of the finest festivals in the world”.
Mr Grant said the Geelong region has thrown off its “sleepy hollow” tag to passing visitors.
“Geelong is reinventing itself,” he said.
Mr Grant said the New Year’s functions secured close to 5000 direct jobs for Geelong people.