Byronbay.com deliveres tourism statistics

Whilst businesses and industry groups petition for funding to increase their web traffic one local business quietly leads the way, achieving more traffic than every other regional tourism website combined.

Byronbay.com turns 15 this year. The iconic website’s staggering visitation make it the most visited destination website on the NSW North Coast.

“Byronbay.com continues to attract over one million visitors per year” said Founder and Director Rick Slater. “Statistics indicate that over half of the people who visit Byron come to our website first”.

“With an estimated 1.7 million visitors annually to Byron, byronbay.com’s one million visitors annually represents a huge chunk of that traffic” outlined Cameron Arnold, Chair of Northern Rivers Tourism. “This is a remarkable achievement for a local business, particularly given the number of tourism websites vying for attention”.

The website enjoyed 1,040,943 visitors in 2011, representing 204 different countries, with 131,102 different search terms containing the word “Byron” used to find byronbay.com
This figure, according to Slater, shows that visitors want to know all kinds of things about the region and they are doing their independent research before they arrive.
“Our role is to provide information including festivals, events, accommodation, restaurants, weddings, activities and visitor information on Byron and the surrounding region.” said Rick Slater. “We don’t take commissions, which I think makes us more credible to consumers. We simply provide exposure for local businesses and organizations so consumers can easily conduct their research and then make direct contact for a more personalized service”.

When Slater started byronbay.com in 1997 the website served to provide information for visitors and co-operative marketing for local business. “What we now find is that we possess the most comprehensive and up to date statistics on tourism in our region” said Mr Slater.

“From the number of visitors that we are seeing from China to whether visitors want to stay in houses, apartment, hotels or camping accommodation, we can explain the past and provide good predictions for tourism trends to come” he said.  “We share this information with our clients where appropriate and we also hope to use it to contribute more broadly to tourism in our magnificent region.

“We are older than google, youtube and facebook. Fifteen years is a long time online” said Slater.

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