Exmouth Image - Sunday TImesWA's Tourism Minister, The Hon Kim Hames and Tourism WA have intigated the plan, following the publication of the Brighthouse Strategic Report into Caravan and Camping Tourism, which identified camping hot spots in the state and ways of improving visitor satisfaction.
Caravan parks will be cleaned up and operators offered training in a bid to overhaul an industry which the Barnett Government says has been neglected too long and is costing the state millions of dollars.
Despite our natural beauty and size, the state attracts only 10 per cent of the country's 9.4 million caravan and camping tourists - a sector worth $7.9 billion nationally in 2011-12.
Tourism Minister Kim Hames said the state was missing out on interstate and intrastate dollars because it had ignored the industry.
Now Tourism WA will launch a bold new plan to reinvigorate the sector.
"There is a whole bunch of people all around Australia who tour around, and they all talk to each other, and I have to say a lot of their comments about WA are fairly negative," Dr Hames said.
"A lot of them avoid WA. They'll get around the top and instead of coming all the way through WA will go back through the middle and dodge WA. That's a pretty common theme that we want to change.
"I don't understand why it hasn't been a key part of the strategy because intra-state tourism is just as valuable as interstate and international. If we want to make our regional centres really prosperous through tourism, we need to get people from the metro area out and about.
"And, there is a huge cohort of retirees Australia-wide, who cruise around Australia in their caravans, that we don't cater for very well."
Dr Hames said caravanners had complained about a lack of dump sites, overflow space for peak periods, places to stop between destinations and a lack of parks in some areas.
He said the first step was to offer park operators and staff professional training to improve the standards of service.
"We do need to try to get the standards of our current operators up to a higher standard and so we're providing a training program for that while we wait to hopefully get the money for the rest of the strategy," he said.
Dr Hames said the state needed to offer a range of facilities from budget sites for self-contained caravanners to tourist parks with all the amenities for families.
Tourism WA says priority locations include travel hot spots such as Exmouth, Broome and Margaret River.
Australian Caravan Club chairman Tom Smith said a common complaint among his members, who were mostly grey nomads, was the lack of budget sites. "It's not just the money involved, it's the atmosphere as well," he said.
"Grey nomads don't want jumping castles and things like that."
Caravan Industry Association of WA chief executive Simon Glossop said it was important to continue catering for grey nomads, but parks with family amenities were also needed.
He said the industry was offering more cabin and chalet accommodation, but the public didn't realise they could stay in a caravan park without a van.
Dr Hames and Mr Glossop agreed marketing was critical to grow the industry.
