Grampians Tourism hopes an increase in visitors from regional Victoria will help negate the loss of revenue stemming from Melbourne's lockdown.
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On Wednesday, June 2, acting premier James Merlino announced that not only would the circuit-breaker lockdown be extended by another week but that Melburnians would not be permitted to travel to regional Victoria for the Queen's Birthday Long Weekend (June 12-14).
Grampians Tourism chief executive Marc Sleeman said he was hopeful the region would attract more holiday goers from elsewhere in the state during this period.
"History has shown that there's a real appetite for region to region travel when Melbourne is locked down," he said.
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"So we're going to see an increase in travel from Bendigo, Ballarat, Swan Hill, Mildura, Warrnambool, and those key regional markets. When you look at the population within an hour and a half of us there are about 600,000 potential visitors, so that's going to fill some of the holes."
But Mr Sleeman said tourism operators were still likely to experience a loss while Melbourne was locked down.
"After speaking to a couple of the operators recently, the visitation from Melbourne on the Queen's Birthday Long Weekend represents about 80 per cent of our visitation, so there's still going to be a massive hole," he said.
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"But we will put some messaging into our regional centres for the long weekend and see if we can activate them for the long weekend."
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