The Regional Visitor Economy funded campaign, involving the South Coast Regional Tourism Organisation (RTO) and Destination NSW, also attracted more than one million leads to South Coast tourism businesses.

Destination NSW statistics reveal the "Unspoilt" campaign promoting the South Coast's natural beauty and unique attractions delivered the strongest growth for the South Coast tourism sector since the National Visitor Survey began 16 years ago.

It also showed overnight visitation at the highest levels since 2004 with a 38.5 per cent growth in visitor nights.

South Coast RTO chairperson Catherine Shields said the result had come from Destination NSW allowing local people to apply local knowledge to coordinate a major marketing campaign targeting visitors.

Ms Shields said the successful 15 month long campaign followed the regional tourism board setting up a marketing committee that initially looked at how the region was being portrayed.

"We know the product intimately because we live in the region," she said.

"We stepped up to the plate and we put a lot of work into it.

"We wanted to differentiate the South Coast from the North Coast and the Central Coast.

"And we knew people saw it as a place to come to relax on unspoilt beaches.

"We did the project ourselves using local photographers, stylists and models."

The committee realised the unspoilt nature of the beautiful South Coast was its biggest selling point so they went with that as branding for the regional tourism industry covering five local government areas.

"That word "unspoilt" kept coming up in research," she said. "People love it down here because it is unspoilt.

"We couldn't come up with a better way to say it."

Mrs Shields, of Nowra, got involved in the RTO two years ago and became chairperson six months ago because she was passionate about the region and its people.