Goulburn Valley tourism month - October 2010
This year's Goulburn Valley Tourism Month has attracted attention and support from Tourism Victoria's Tom Smith and Destination Melbourne's head Chris Buckingham who will both attend and participate in events and workshops organised for the month long event in October.
Tourism Month has engaged a number of high profile personalities for events throughout the month and everyone is invited to come and join in the celebration of what the wider region has to offer. Open days, festivals, free bus tours, horse racing, art displays, music, workshops, markets and come and try days are just a few of the events to inspire people to be out and about during October.
Tourism Greater Shepparton's (TGS) inaugural Tourism Week was held in October 2009. This event raised the profile of Tourism in the region to both locals and visitors and demonstrated that Tourism is everyone's business.
Goulburn Valley Tourism Month's regional flavor this year is a deliberate focus to broaden the interest and collaborative work between four neighboring Shires, Greater Shepparton, Murrindindi, Strathbogie and Mitchell and will expose residents in all shires to the array of product and attractions the region has to offer.
"Attracting visitors and encouraging locals to be tourists in their own backyard is what this month is all about ", according to Tourism Events coordinator, Cheryl Hammer.
"We have gained wonderful support from three of the four shires with Greater Shepparton a Silver sponsor and Murrindindi and Strathbogie committed as Bronze sponsors and this will go a long way to helping us market Tourism Month to a much wider audience". Look out for the Goulburn Valley Tourism Month logo to be used in conjunction will the 80 events listed for the October event.
Tourism Greater Shepparton is Gold Sponsor in a bid to show its active and proactive support in growing tourism markets in the region.
Local industry has also supported the event with Tourism Month's printing partners, the Prominent Group coming on as a Silver sponsor, and other businesses such as Shepparton's Quest Apartments, Central Shepparton Apartments, Country Comfort, Woodlands Estate Lavender, ConnectGV, Emerald Bank, Photo 8 Photography and Goulburn River Valley Tourism also putting their hand up as supporters.
"All sponsorship funds will be used to promote and market our wonderful event to the masses and we could not do this without the amazing support from our major media sponsors GV Media Centre and the Shepparton News. Our media exposure will be wonderful leading up to and during this month of activities. There will be no excuse for people to say they didn't know about it," Cheryl said.
In the next few weeks information will become available on www.discovershepparton.com.au or you can contact Cheryl Hammer on 0410 561 934 or Kate Smith on 0418 382 985.