Port Lincoln’s Visitor Information Centre (VIC) took home bronze at the 2023 Australian Tourism Awards held on Friday, March 15 in Darwin.
The centre was automatically entered into the national competition following its gold at the 2023 South Australian Tourism Awards.
Port Lincoln City Council economic and tourism growth manager Naomi Blacker said it was a fantastic achievement not only for the centre but the entire tourism and economic development team at the council who worked with, and supported, team leader Penny Carter and her team.
“Collectively the VIC and tourism team deliver outstanding tourism information services to our personal visitors, but also deliver the cruise ship program, develop new products like our very successful Monopoly board game, and manage our online presence with new and compelling content,” she said.
“To come third against much bigger cities and visitor centres with bigger budgets was indeed a welcome surprise.”
The Australian Tourism Awards has been considered the tourism industry’s national standard of excellence.
Finalists were chosen from each state and territory’s gold tourism award winners and then put to a panel of expert industry judges, where a winner of the nation was crowned.
Mayor Diana Mislov congratulated the council’s tourism team on the “wonderful win and national recognition of the great work they do, along with our generous volunteers who give up their time to support our cruise program”.
“This accolade comes on the back of a number of awards for Port Lincoln over the past 12 months and is evidence of the standard and quality of services our council delivers to our community and visitors,” she said.
Penny Carter and tourism and economic development officer Dylan Swincer were in Darwin to collect the award on behalf of the community.
