Australian Regional Tourism (ART) has this week unveiled a comprehensive online professional development training program for Local Government and tourism professionals at a meeting of regional tourism organisations in Melbourne.    Tailored specifically for regional destinations, the initiative will help tourism providers restimulate visitation to regional areas impacted by two years of COVID-related travel restrictions.   The program, sponsored by Tourism Australia, will be delivered online via the Tourism Hub, providing a universally accessible tool for regional tourism industry professionals to better understand the role of the visitor economy in regional communities and best practice industry planning and development.   Coralie Bell, Chair at Australian Regional Tourism said, “Destination Managers and Tourism Managers in the regions don’t always have access to professional development and tourism capability building programs. This program has been developed by the regional tourism community, and for the regional tourism community, and sets the minimum level of knowledge required to work effectively within destination development.”   “The program is delivered online to enable self-paced learning and accessed via The Tourism Hub. The Tourism Hub is a critical tool for anyone working in the tourism industry and provides a single platform to access everything tourism, from the latest data, research, news, and grant funding programs to digital networking across regions,” she said.

ART’s training program will cover 12 modules across a broad spectrum of insightful topics including: 

• Introduction to tourism and ATDW
• The importance of social license Destination management planning
• Destination management planning – the implementation phase
• Crisis planning
• Local Government and the visitor economy
• Visitor information centres
• Marketing segmentation
• Destination marketing 
• Destination storytelling
• Grant writing Leadership 
• Regional events

Modules will be delivered by leading tourism professionals including: Coralie Bell, Chair at ART; Rob Dougan, Tourism Australia; Alysia Brandenburg, Ecotourism Australia; Mark Greaves, The Tourism Group; Paul Matthews, Visitor Economy Tourism Consultancy, Hamish Fell, Fell Consulting; Steve Thompson and Cinnamon Dunsford, Locale Consulting; Linda Tilman, rEvents Academy; Cara George, Hipscotch; Ali Uren, Kiikstart; Hannah Stratham, Media Mortar; Peter Freeman, Woof Media; Carolyn Childs, My Travel Research; and Paige Rowett and Rebecca White, Tourism eSchool. 

To participate or become an ART member
To learn more about The Tourism Hub