MILDURA’S economy has returned to pre-COVID levels despite online shopping remaining a “core issue” for localised recovery.
Data supplied by Mildura Regional Development (MRD) showed a $10 million increase in average monthly local expenditure over the past two months, but online spending continued to grow significantly.
MRD chief executive Brett Millington said that while the traditionally busy Easter-April period took a $20 million hit last year compared to 2019 during the initial phase of COVID-19, the local economy was showing some resilience as restrictions eased.
“With that tourism or visitation element that’s going on at the moment because people can’t travel overseas, you are certainly going to see those increases,” Mr Millington said.
“We started to transition back up through May and June to a return-to-normal level or slightly above,” he said.
But Mr Millington said that while trade had gradually returned to some normality, there had been a 20 per cent increase on people spending online and out of town.
“Back to 2019, resident online spend was about $20 million average per month, but from about May 2019 we’ve started to see an increase up towards $25 million and above, so there’s been a gradual trajectory,” he said.
“Resident online spend over the journey has just continued to increase.
“When we talk about issues in regard to retail — as in bricks-and-mortar shops — this is one of the core issues.”
Mr Millington said he did not believe the ban on people from metropolitan Melbourne travelling to the regions would have as significant impact on the local economy as other holiday periods, but in combination with a usually strong South Australian contingent that’s missing, there would be impacts.
“There’s usually a slight increase curve over the June long weekend, but not as significant as the March long weekend, when the weather is warmer and people want to get out more,” he said.
“People are more used to not being out and about as much in winter, however we have not been in a period where overseas travel and all those other options aren’t necessarily on the table, so the opportunity was probably greater this June long weekend than ever.
“Having said that, a lot of people would probably go to Melbourne from regional areas for the June long weekend — they can’t do that now and they will start to look at alternatives such as places that are warmer than where they are at home.
“If you were down on the coast in Warrnambool or Geelong, watching the south-westerlies come in, and then you’re looking up at Mildura and it’s three or four degrees warmer, you might be thinking, ‘Hang on, it’s worth the road trip’.”
Mr Millington said the region’s dedicated advertising campaign targeting signage during AFL matches during the COVID-19 lockdown last year was paying dividends.
“We targeted a lot of games where Geelong were playing, because they have a big following, but also for Melbourne audiences, and we had an 800 per cent increase in the number of hits to our website from people from Geelong through September last year,” he said.
“That coincided entirely with the fact that floating around our advertising signage was ‘Visit Mildura’.
“During the Christmas period traders were saying that it was amazing the number of people from Geelong that are here, and I’m just going, ‘This is fantastic’.
“It verified the effort that we had been putting in to some of these places we were trying to target.”
