The Border is a pit-stop for many travelling from one city to another – but whether or not they stay depends on the cause of their trip.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The Kumar family, on holidays from India, stopped in Albury en-route to Canberra from Melbourne.
Arun Kumar said he was impressed by the Albury Railway Station and planned a few nights’ stay on the return trip to better explore the town.
“We’ve got all the information from the local area and now we’ll make decisions on where to visit and how long to spend here,” he said.
“Tourists will appreciate this because they can come and see the contrast between the modern and the historic.”
Destination NSW reported a 1.8 per cent decline in 2015 in overall visitation to Albury, Corowa, Echuca-Moama and Yarrawonga/Mulwala – the first recorded drop since 2009.
Domestic overnight travel was unchanged on 2014 levels, but the number of visitors coming from overseas increased by almost 2 per cent to 20,400.
Atura Albury general manager Jodi Brown said the decline had been experienced by many hotels.
“Just in those months, leading up to the end of the calendar year, we definitely saw a drop in our results in that October, November, December period,” she said.
“I know that’s the same for most hotels by looking at their rates.”
Ms Brown said numbers always spiked around major events.
“We’re reliant on local events, so right now we’ve just last week been pretty much 100 per cent full for the Country Cup tennis and the basketball,” she said.
“We had to send away a number of people and they weren’t able to get rooms … I think we could alleviate that issue if the basketball was a separate week to the tennis.”
While numbers were down, estimated revenue raised from tourism across the region increased more than 10 per cent from 2014 to $656 million.
There was also a 7.7 per cent rise in the number of overnight visitors travelling for business.
More than 40 per cent of all visitors in 2014 were aged 50 to 70.
Albury mayor Henk van de Ven said more initiatives were in place to entice more people to visit for business and pleasure.
“We’re working on a marketing campaign that will begin in February, part of this will specifically target a younger audience,” he said.