In his address to a Destination Wollongong partner function on Thursday at Steamers Restaurant chair Colin Bloomfield said the tourism body was going to create a new event called Tourism Week.

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“It will be held in late November and include a series of events aimed at different audiences to increase awareness about the importance of visitors to the local economy,” he said.

“Mark Sleigh likes to say, and I agree with him 100 per cent, there is no business in Wollongong that doesn’t benefit from the visitor economy. We are going to try and highlight that. It is an opportunity for all of our businesses to grow and engage their business during that period.”

Tourism Week is part of business planning work the tourism body has been doing to help further grow the visitor economy.

“We have a clear business plan. Our second part of that plan is around destination marketing and we are very proud to announce we are going to do a full brand refresh for our destination this year. That work is underway. Our partner is Wisdom. As part of that we are going to do a review of our visitor information strategy. So watch this space.”

Mr Bloomfield said the State Government recently released data on visitation that shows visitation keeps growing. “We have seen a major increase in visitation in Wollongong. The Destination NSW figures say there has been a 14.4 per cent increase in visitation over the 12 months to March 2018”.