An analysis of visitors to the CountryNSW expo held at Sydney Olympic Park Sydney Showground indicates the Central West was the second most popular region people were coming to see, Expo organiser Peter Bailey has revealed.
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Parkes, Oberon, Lithgow, Orange, Cabonne and Grenfell represented the Central West, with all centres reporting strong interest.
Even centres such as Bathurst and Mudgee who were not represented were on the radar and were in the top 10 of centres people came to visit.
Comments from visitors also indicated how much they enjoyed talking to people face to face as over 23% enjoyed the face to face contact and 28% found the information the stands had to offer was very helpful and a significant number enjoyed the friendliness of our CountryNSW Expo.
“I much prefer to talk to people about this type of thing not just look at council websites. Moving is a big deal and seems like the councils that are not here either don't want us or don't realise how big of a deal it is to move to a new area.” Nina – Expo feedback survey.
“We came to the Expo two years ago and were impressed then. We have been looking ever since and now after this year we are ready to go visit places and move in the next 12 months. We enjoy taking the information home and reading it. We met the mayor of a town a few years ago and we thought that was very impressive!” Tony and Anne – Expo feedback survey.
Peter said visitors were asked several questions during their visit. One was:
Has the Expo had any influence on your decision to move?
* Maybe for the future – 14 per cent.
* No, it made no difference – 20 per cent.
* Yes, we are moving – 18 per cent.
* Inspired, keep on doing research – 48 per cent.
“One of the impressive things this year was the success of small communities and new Exhibitors, centres such as Grenfell, Urana, Temora and Gloucester all were extremely pleased with the Expo as was Lithgow, a first time Exhibitor,” Peter said.
“What has also changed is the interest of people moving to areas more than three hours from Sydney.
“When we started 11 years everyone wanted to be within three hours of Sydney.
“Not any more. Now people are prepared to move further afield.
“The other interesting question asked was what do Sydneysiders call areas outside of Sydney. Nearly 70% call it Country followed by 30% who call it regional,” Peter said.
“This aligns with our name change this year to the ‘CountryNSW Expo.”.
