By MATT NICHOLLS
ARMIDALE’S rise to become a tourism hotspot was no fluke, according to the men driving the city’s tourism and economic development.
Tony Broomfield and Harold Ritch said that a culmination of hard work and Armidale’s prominence in the national spotlight attributed to the city being named as the number three destination in Australian Traveller magazine.
“This didn’t just happen overnight,” said Mr Broomfield, who is the project manager of Armidale Dumaresq Council’s economic development, tourism and marketing team.
“It started several years ago when we came up with the branding for Armidale and ’Experience the Highs’ and it has flowed on from there.”
Outside factors such as the University of New England soaring online presence, the prominence of Tony Windsor in the hung parliament, the NBN rollout and other national headlines also helped put Armidale on the map.
“Anyone who comes to Armidale from Sydney or interstate love it here,” Mr Broomfield said.
“I find it’s the people who are from Armidale that are the most negative about it.”
His colleague Mr Ritch said there was a rumour going around the city that the council had “bought the votes” to appear in Australian Traveller.
“That’s simply nonsense,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of hard work put in from this office that has paid off.”
Last year, Armidale appeared in several magazines and national publications after Mr Broomfield invited several prominent journalists to the city.
They were then taken on a familiarisation ntour of Armidale and the region and shown its beauty.
“That’s called strategy and it paid off because we got a lot of good publicity about it,” Mr Ritch said.
Events such as A Day on the Green and Flix in the Stix have also helped point visitors in the direction of Armidale.
“The important thing out of all of this is that we capitalise on the publicity,” Mr Broomfield said.
“There’s still a lot more things in the pipeline at our end, but this has given us some great momentum.”
