Summer Vehicle Counting Project

A summer vehicle counting project was commenced on the Melbourne Cup long weekend of 2007, recognising that vehicle counts are a useful indicator of visitation and thus a helpful method to measure success of initiatives to attract non-winter visitation.

A consistent survey of the number of vehicles visiting Alpine Resorts in summer was made possible following the permanent installation of automatic counters on the access roads to all six Victorian Alpine Resorts. Each Alpine Resort Management Board collects the vehicle numbers recorded by the road counters and the results are collated by the Council, with a season report then compiled and published.

The first summer season report was published in June 2008. The report shows that over 160,000 vehicles visited Victorian Alpine Resorts during the six month period from November 2007 until April 2008. The report also includes some historical records and estimates of total visitation. The report is available in hard copy as well as electronic form. It is intended to be the first of an annual series of reports.

Summer 2007/2008 Vehicle Counting Report (PDF 415 kb)

To provide a better estimate of the number of visitors to Resorts, the 2008/09 survey included a physical count of the number of visitors per vehicle on a number of selected days during the survey period. The days were chosen to cover a range of holiday and non holiday periods covering both weekends and week days. Using this data, Council was able to report that 333,000 people visited Victorian Alpine Resorts last summer. While the total numbers for the 2008/09 summer were adversely impacted by bushfires, vehicle numbers prior to the bushfires recorded a 5.6% increase. A strong link between increased visitation and the staging of Resort events was also recorded.

Summer 2008/09 Visitation Survey Report (PDF 388 Kb)