Free Gympie Cooloola Tourism membership on offer

Real experiences was the message at the launch of Gympie Cooloola Tourism’s new tourism and business initiatives at Rainbow Beach Sports Club last month.

Chairman Jan Watt announced the free GCT membership offer for existing and new members.

Explaining that GCT operated to provide services to its members, Ms Watt said it was the organisation’s intent to build the membership level to at least 1000 if not more by the end of financial year to allow GCT to better promote what the whole region had to offer.  

Ms Watt spoke on the importance of businesses recognising that they all service visitors to the region in various ways and were therefore tourism related.  “We want as many businesses as possible to join GCT to allow us to provide a collective promotion of the region to visitors”.

The presentation included the new look GCT website with its responsive technology and promotional opportunities and highlighted the strong digital media approach that GCT is taking to promote tourism related businesses.

Director Cassie Head, a self-confessed Social Media activist, spoke about the benefits of story-telling in the new social media age. She described the new ‘blog bank’ as a bank of members’ real stories about real people which were valuable assets in the digital marketing world. She said the variety of Social Media approaches would be utilised deliver promotion of GCT members to assist in attracting more traffic to their businesses and websites.   

GCT has partnered with Workforce Futures in its new role in delivering industry development to the tourism and hospitality industry.  Stephen Ollerenshaw who flew in from Sydney for the launch presented at both functions introducing the benefits of the program on offer through GCT.  Paul Smith, from Restaurants and Catering Australia, also shared how the organisation was involved in the Workforce Futures program.

Businesses are invited to take up the free GCT membership offer and the free face to face consultation with specialist Workforce Futures Skills Advisors.  A business diagnostic will be provided on key areas of business operations supported by a Workforce Development Plan which is intended to identify the key workforce issues for the business and a range of actions to assist the business to respond.

You can access the free membership offer by GCT by logging onto the website www.cooloola.org.au and either select the membership application on the contact page or simply download the application form from the Membership section and submit.