Rachel Hagan, Yorke Peninsula Country Times
The value of agritourism in Australia is expected to reach about $18 billion by 2023, and Yorke Peninsula residents have shown they are ready to learn all the tricks of the trade.
Yorke Peninsula Council, Regional Development Australia and Yorke Peninsula Tourism delivered an agritourism workshop last Wednesday (June 19) for YP residents to see what the future could bring in regard to tourism.
Author of Booked Out! How to Start and Grow a Successful Regional Tourism Business, Susan Lee, spoke about how she wanted to inspire regional people to take advantage of the demand.
“People are doing it a lot in Europe, spending time on a European farm eating French food, on a French farm, and people are loving that very authentic cultural experience all over the world,” Ms Lee said.
The key to success was to have lots of imagination, and Ms Lee said it was important to be different by referencing your own story to stand out from the crowd.
Ms Lee said a big mistake would be to go out and buy all the same IKEA furniture that everyone else had, and to instead think about the visual experience the customer wanted.
“Because if you’re the same as everyone else, you’re not going to stand out and you’re not going to get that booking,” she said.
The agritourism experience is not new to South Australia, but it certainly is now in a revival period.
“It is probably because people are more conscious of environmental issues, the sustainability story and younger people taking over farms,” she said.
“After Covid there was much more tree change with people moving back to the country and a bit of a rise in regional travel.
However, it still is a challenge for regional people, especially in SA, to get those tourists out of the cities and away from the east coast.
Ms Lee said, with the Brisbane Olympics on our doorstep, it was time for small businesses and the State Government to start thinking about how they could lure those tourists away from the cities.
“It’s kinda how long it takes, it can take three years to start a business and really launch a brand,” she said.
But it is not as easy as just starting a business. There are many challenges small business owners must face in order to get their product off the ground.
“You’re doing all the booking, you’re the receptionist and the finance person as well, welcome to the world of small business, but some farmers would know that already,” she said.
“And another common myth of agritourism is that it is going to be easy, or it’s going to be some sort of holiday.
“It is a 24/7 industry and customer service has its own demands.”
Despite the challenges, Ms Lee said agritourism could be a good alternative for family members who wanted to stay in the regions where they grew up, but did not necessarily want to be farmers.
“They realise that maybe some of the kids have creative skills and they are better off in a different industry towards more hospitality, sales or arts,” she said.
This article appeared in Yorke Peninsula Country Times, 25 June 2024.
