Roger Grant sails away from tourism role

LONG-serving Geelong tourism boss Roger Grant was given a rousing send-off by colleagues and friends at an event in Grovedale last week.

Mr Grant, the outgoing executive director of Tourism Greater Geelong and the Bellarine (TGGB), was the guest of honour at TGGB’s latest member forum, held at the Narana Aboriginal Culture Centre on June 18.

Mr Grant has been at the forefront of Geelong’s transition over the past 25 years from a tourism subregion of the Great Ocean Road into a recognisable stand-alone destination.

In 1993, there were less than 240,000 overnight visitors to the Barwon region, which took in Geelong, the Bellarine, Surf Coast and part of the Otways. The first scheduled passenger flights out of Avalon Airport were also still two years away.

The region’s visitor economy now supports more than 11,200 jobs in the region, with 5.8 million visitors annually.

TGGB board chair John Stevens and incoming TGGB executive director Brett Ince paid tribute to Mr Grant.

“Your performance has been absolutely fantastic, you’ve left big shoes to fill,” Mr Stevens said.

“It’s not only the numbers that you’ve taken leadership of and helped to grow, I think even more importantly within those numbers is that you’ve taken tourism from something that people didn’t know about to being a really legitimate and important part of what our region is about these days.”

Mr Grant said there had been “a lot of highlights along the way, and a lot of frustrations, too”.

“It’ll be an exciting future, I’m really confident about where Geelong’s going, I’m really confident the team will continue to do fantastic things.”