Non-winter Products

A key thrust of the Government's Alpine Resorts 2020 Strategy is the development of the Alpine Resorts as all season destinations.

The Council has been working closely with the five Alpine Resort Management Boards to make this all season vision a reality. To this end, Council has:

• Conducted workshops - at Fitzroy in February 2004, at Lake Mountain in October 2004, East Melbourne in January 2005 and at Mount Buller in July 2005.
• Established an All Seasons Committee, and engaged with key stakeholders.
• Undertaken a range of in-house research, including:
  - product analysis, motivator - de-motivator assessment, identification of potential resort-specific product, and
  - a comprehensive research literature review
• Documented non-winter products - by preparing an asset inventory as at March 2005, and an update in February 2007, to inform product development.
• Worked closely with Tourism Victoria and the Board of Alpine Resorts Tourism on market research into visitor needs, expectations and barriers to visitation (such as Snow Segmentation Studies and Regional Awareness and Perceptions Studies and, the Council led, Economic Significance Study)
• Organised a summer season launch - October 2004.
• Prepared events calendars - for 2004/05 (PDF 232 kb) (which was published), 2005/06 and 2006/07. Boards now publish their own calendars on the respective Resort website and/or the North East Tourism Inc website, (www.highcountryrewards.com.au).

The research material produced to date has been made available to the Resort Boards and the Board of Alpine Resorts Tourism; it is not available to the general public.

All of the Victorian Alpine Resort Management Boards now actively promote summer activities and summer events programs. The summer of 2006 saw the first summer season when all Resorts were "open for business", albeit that they were then adversely affected by the "Great Divide Complex" bushfires.