Thursday, 18 May 2017
The NSW Government has announced it will triple the number of free webcasts for the state’s tourism operators this year, in response to the growing need for online learning among rural and regional tourism operators.
Minister for Tourism and Major Events Adam Marshall said the NSW Government was expanding the NSW First program following the huge take-up of online learning among rural and regional tourism businesses last year.
“NSW First provides free online webcasts and webinars which aims to help NSW tourism businesses develop, promote and sell their products, no matter where they are in NSW,” Mr Marshall said.
“The expanded program this year will help further develop the offerings of Sydney and rural and regional tourism businesses by including 18 interactive online training events, which is three times more than what was offered in 2016.
“As a result of last year’s NSW First program and the advice and support of experts from the State’s tourism agency, we are now seeing 37 new tourism products being offered in international markets, and more than half of those new tourism products come from rural and regional NSW.
“These workshops take a ‘how-to’ focus, giving the hard-working tourism operators advice on how to access funding, how to engage traditional and digital media, how to target specific sectors including youth or Aboriginal tourism, and how to become export-ready.”
Mr Marshall said this was another example of the NSW Government’s commitment to growing tourism in rural and regional NSW.
“We are entering an exciting time for tourism in NSW, seeing the sector reenergised through innovative reforms and record investment,” Mr Marshall said.
“Tourism is the lifeblood of many of our rural and regional communities, the sector contributes $14.5 billion to the NSW economy and directly employs 85,000 people and I’m confident through initiatives such as this, we’ll boost these numbers even further.”
To view the initial list of events in the NSW First Workshop program for 2017, and to register, go to www.destinationnsw.com.au/nswfirst