Grampians, Wimmera regions to benefit from Your Happy Space campaign | Video

Tourism Minister John Eren launched the ‘Your Happy Space’ campaign at St Arnaud on Friday morning. 

The campaign encourages the metropolitan residents and millennials to visit regional areas and showcase experiences and food, art, music, nature and culture.

Mr Eren said the Grampians featured heavily in the campaign. 

He said the tourism market had increased in regional Victoria due to niche projects such as the Silo Art Trail and the Grampians Peaks Trail. 

But he said 53 per cent of people who lived in Melbourne hadn’t ventured to rural areas of Victoria and stayed overnight. 

“This is designed to attract Melbournians to discover what’s around Victoria before they venture out of our state. We want to grow the economy in regional Victoria through the visitor economy,” he said. 

Mr Eren said more than 50 million people had visited regional Victoria in the year to March 2018, spending $9.7 billion and creating thousands of jobs. He said the state government had invested $51.1 million into Visit Victoria and $20 million into regional events.

“This campaign will help make Melbournians aware of what we have to offer in regional Victoria,” Mr Eren said.

“This could create some vitally needed jobs in regions such as (St Arnaud and surrounds).”

He said visitor spending had increased from $21 billion to more than $26 billion.

“It’s created some 215,000 jobs. We want to increase it to an over $36.5 billion industry by 2025. We are ahead of the game and will probably exceed that by 2025,” Mr Eren said. “We are very much focused in on making sure regions don’t miss out in this growing economy.” 

Mr Eren said the government had invested $103 million into Regional Tourism Infrastructure Fund. 

Visit Victoria chief executive Peter Bingeman said tourism contributed more than $8 billion into the state’s economy. 

“We want every Melbournian to stay another night, have another dinner, have another coffee,” he said.