Commonwealth Games hits Gold Coast tourism numbers

With on the ground reports that visitor numbers to the Gold Coast took a massive dip during the Commonwealth Games, Village Roadshow has blamed the event and recent wet weather for poorer-than-expected performance at its Gold Coast theme parks.

Village cites the Commonwealth Games and a wetter-than-usual month of March as reasons for slow trading at their theme parks that include Warner Bros. Movie World, Sea World and Wet'n'Wild Gold Coast. The company now predicts that their theme parks will come in with lower earnings than the 2016/17 financial year.

With fatalities at Dreamworld impacting performance during the previous financial year, this year's poor performance is despite of the acclaimed launch of DC Rivals HyperCoaster in September 2017 and the introduction of new pricing for theme park tickets and passes that saw the company move firmly away from discounting.

Forecasting an overall loss of up to $10 million for the financial year, Village Roadshow also cite challenging trading conditions for its Cinema Exhibition division.

While the Gold Coast has benefitted from highly visible media coverage during the 21st Commonwealth Games, reaching a claimed estimated 1.5 billion people worldwide, visitation to the region fell during the Games.

Now, marketing bodies are looking to capitalise on the exposure.

Tourism Australia Managing Director John O’Sullivan believed the marketing generated by the event has been worth hundreds of millions of dollars, advising “we know from research that major events – particularly sporting ones – are significant drivers of visitor demand and key to increasing visitor yield, with around 19% of all international visitors to Australia attending a festival, cultural or sporting event during their trip.”

Gold Coast Tourism has immediate plans in place to roll out visitor marketing campaigns targeting the drive market and interstate tourists.

Gold Coast Tourism Executive Director of Corporate Affairs and Strategy Dean Gould advised “the biggest audience for the Commonwealth Games is actually the Australian domestic market.

“We are the ones that love the Commonwealth Games the most because we win so many things. So that’s probably the biggest TV audience for the Games and we want to capitalise on that and continue a really strong push into the Australian domestic market.”

Advising that domestic marketing campaigns had commenced this week, Gould added “it is lovely to have the international exposure - that is not insignificant - but where Gold Coast tourism bread is buttered is in the domestic market so we’ll be pushing our domestic market very powerfully.”

From 1st July, a new interstate campaign done in conjunction with Tourism and Events Queensland is to be rolled out, with Gould adding that a second key area Gold Coast Tourism would continue to focus on was attracting conference and conventions and their higher-spending delegates.

Figures associated with staging the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games estimated 672,000 visitors were attracted during the two weeks generating a $320 million economic boost across Queensland. 

Images: Broadbeach from the air (top) and the DC Rivals HyperCoaster at Movie World (below).

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