When Tourism Wollongong general manager Greg Binskin visited the northern suburbs and saw hundreds of motorcycles, overseas visitors, beachgoers and Sydneysiders eagerly walking Sea Cliff Bridge, he felt proud of his small team's achievements.The comprehensive strategic plan that chairman Jim Eddy and Mr Binskin developed after he moved to Wollongong from Thredbo in 2001 was now bearing fruit.Tourism NSW figures for the past five years show international visits to Wollongong increased by 43 per cent, domestic day visits 23 per cent and domestic overnight visits 11 per cent. Tourism Wollongong recently lobbied for and raised $1.7 million in Federal and State Government funding to help promote the city. It now attracts more than $10 million in free media exposure a year.With the opening of the gateway visitors' centre, Mr Binskin said it was an exciting time for the city. Despite all the economic uncertainty he thought it a great time to market a product with the rare advantage of being such a beautiful location with so much to do, so close to Sydney.In the past year, Tourism Wollongong staff attended 15 trade shows and hosted 218 journalists and agents on 25 familiarisation tours.Successfully promoting Wollongong as an escape from Sydney during the APEC conference in 2007 and developing innovative campaigns to attract conference, events and sporting business have been major achievements.Tourism Research Australia National Visitor Survey figures reveal Wollongong continues to enjoy phenomenal growth with the amount tourists spend each year rising from $368 million to $427 million over the past two years.During the same period the number of overseas visitors who spent a night increased from 32,000 to 53,000 and the number of jobs dependent on tourism grew from 4200 to 4800.The 600 additional jobs are in businesses not directly involved in the industry.Five Islands Brewery's Michael Bolt hosted 3000 Chinese visitors for lunch in January and this week was still welcoming up to seven coach loads of Asian tourists a day.New inbound operators are delivering more business, which started with Tourism Wollongong targeting North Asia six years ago.Operators such as Just Cruisin' Harley Tours, Symbio Wildlife Park, Jamberoo Action Park and MFS Living and Leisure have all recently invested in new products.Novotel Northbeach general manager Walter Immoos acknowledged Tourism Wollongong for its strategic marketing and groundbreaking work. It had tapped into online-marketing including with Westlink M7 and wotif.com before any other tourist association."On wotif , we got to the front page as a destination under Grand Pacific Drive," he said.Mr Immoos said that despite the economic crisis, Sydney people still needed to escape and Wollongong was capitalising on its location.Tourism NSW summer media campaigns are also helping Wollongong to become "top-of-mind" as a short break destination. Marketing and indirect promotion from car advertisements filmed on Sea Cliff Bridge are attracting unique business such as Prancing Horse Car Rentals - Ferrari driving days, Bass and Flinders sightseeing cruises and the Cockatoo Run heritage train rides out of Sydney.More car clubs and motoring enthusiasts have been cruising Grand Pacific Drive since the opening of the Australian Motorlife Museum and Mr Binskin said operators were delivering on promises to help fill all the new rooms.He said Wollongong City Council had helped with improvements to the foreshore and he was confident it would help the city continue to move forward in these tough economic times.