President’s Report August 2025
Hello Members and Inverloch Business Community,
Welcome to our latest ITA newsletter with an update on a whole range of news, events and updates on ITA Promotions/Marketing initiatives.
The ITA is now focused on broader promotion of Inverloch and our member businesses, running or helping promote events that attract visitors and locals alike and advocating for the town on issues which impact our economy and tourism.
We are excitedly planning our second Equinox Festival for 21-23rd March 2026 and plan on it being bigger and better than our hugely successful 2025 Festival.
As President and with committee support I am advocating strongly to Government on issues that impact our tourism economy, none more so than the coastal erosion challenges faced by our town. We will continue to show up and ensure focus remains until resolutions are reached.
ITA continues to pursue grants to support our programs. We recently received a Business Activation Grant from the Bass Coast Shire which is being used to create an exciting Best Bits campaign for Inverloch. We have also secured a $6500 grant with support from Mary Aldred (MP Monash Electorate) via the Federal Government Stronger Communities Grant which will be used to support our website development and promote a key tourism event. We also await decisions on two additional grants exceeding $30,000 which will support our 2026 Equinox Festival which is forecasted to bring over 4500 visitors to Inverloch, injecting in excess of $500,000 into the community. The ITA has also commenced dealings with AVANT group who can assist us in future applications for major Grants.
The ITA will continue to champion and promote Inverloch’s diverse local businesses and experiences; showcasing our nature, wellbeing, food/drink and retail offerings to inspire more travellers to Visit Inverloch building a thriving visitor economy. Our aim is to grow our engaged audiences through strong social media programs and a greater on line presence, building on our 25,000 strong subscribers and followers which has grown rapidly over the past two years. In the Jan-June 2025 period ITA and Visit Inverloch’s socials had over 1,372 MILLION views, Inverloch Surrounds and Business Groups hit over 15k members, our tourism data base hit over 7800 and the Visit Inverloch website experienced 35,000 page visits. Most importantly 84% of website views came from outside Bass Coast Shire and 34-51% of social followers across our various accounts are based in Melbourne and surrounds or outside of Bass Coast Shire.
Our ITA Committee have many ideas and projects which are on our list but we are reminded that we are volunteers with limits on our time and energy. We will prioritise projects and ideas that best promote our town and can lead to increased visitation and overall business activity.
The Committee will welcome ideas that assist this objective and would greatly welcome volunteers who can genuinely help us to deliver our programs; anyone can do this without having to be on our Committee or attend meetings.
Pleas register your interest to work with the existing ITA volunteer community by emailing admin@inverloch.org.au.
I hope to meet you all at the next Mixer Event at the RACV on 5 September at which you can hear about business promotion programs available from Destination Gippsland and our own amazing ITA Marketing/ Promotions Team.
On behalf of the committee I thank every business for their support of the ITA, which is in fact supporting Inverloch.
With thanks, your enthusiastic Prez,
Glenn.
Image credit with thanks to Andrew Harrison Photographer