Mackay Tourism back on track

Money in the bank: Risk pays off for Mackay Tourism
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MACKAY Tourism in Australia has good news. For the three years leading up to the 2018/19 financial year, Mackay Tourism reported a surplus. Now, the organisation has more than $128,000 in the bank even after reporting a $29,118 loss this financial year.

With a few major moves behind the scenes, including the relocation of the Tourism Information Centre to Sarina, the organization was prompted to prepare for the worst โ€“ which never came.

Chief executive officer Tas Webber said last year, Mackay Tourism took on a lot of risks, so he asked for additional funding from the previous two years to be brought forward in case there were any issues.

โ€œLuckily for us, we didnโ€™t have any issues,โ€ he said. โ€œThat is the reason it looks like weโ€™re running

The end-of-year balance has increased nearly sevenfold on the previous year and there is room to invest the money back into the regionโ€™s tourism industry.

The biggest money earner for Mackay Tourism was โ€˜operating fundingโ€™, which brought in more than $900,000. The group also forked out $108,174 on marketing but made about $60,000 more in marketing revenue.

The biggest expense for the organization was wages and superannuation, costing $641,590. Coupled with operational costs, Mackay Tourism spent more than a million dollars.

While Mackay Tourismโ€™s bank account was flush on June 30, it only had $358,751 in cash or cash equivalents, significantly down from the nearly $800,000 it had in 2018.

In a year Mackay Tourism had:

  • 19,966 likes on Facebook
  • 10,976 Instagram followers
  • $3,117,411 in media value
  • 858 mentions in the media
  • 11 famils in the region
  • 8 marketing campaigns
  • 35 region operators awarded Best of Queensland
  • 16,467 visitor information centre walk-ins
  • 16,300 votes for M to stand for Mackay in Sunrise M for Mackay Campaign

www.mackayregion.com/

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