Spending up across city

THE Geelong Chamber of Commerce has welcomed the latest economic figures from the City of Greater Geelong, which revealed $5.9 billon was spent in the municipality over the past financial year.

Based on the city’s analysis of Spendmapp data by Georgrafic, the $5.9 billion result announced last week is 11 per cent higher than the previous year, or 4 per cent when adjusted for inflation.

This spending was split between residents ($4.2 billion) and visitors ($1.7 billion).

Geelong Chamber of Commerce chief executive officer Jeremy Crawford said the headline figures were good for two reasons.

“We wanted to see an increase – coming out of COVID, it was important that local business, whether it’s online or physically in the City of Greater Geelong, see the spend continue to trend upwards; that’s obviously really positive.

“But it’s also really promising, given what’s happening in the economic environment from different parts of Australia whether or not cost of living is a huge issue.

“We’re taking the view that it’s absolutely an issue for some people, but we’re also seeing some really positive stories coming out about how the local economy is absolutely flourishing at the moment.”

Dining and entertainment ($1.1 billion), grocery stores and supermarkets ($1.0 billion) and transport ($782 million) were the top three categories.

Since the end of COVID lockdowns in October 2021, spending on dining and entertainment in Greater Geelong has consistently outstripped grocery spending each month, and had the largest growth in local spending ($196 million) over 2022-23.

The night-time economy (6pm-6am) appears to have shrugged off the impacts of COVID in 2021-22, valued at $930 million in 2022-23 and growing faster than the economy overall at 18 per cent.

Mr Crawford said dining and entertainment was a very strong economic indicator.

“When people go out, they’re not just buying food, they’re buying an experience and they’re buying social interaction, and they’re supporting what is a fast-growing hospitality sector in Geelong at the moment – we’re still seeing new venues opening and popping up; new hotels.

“What we’d like to see is to ride the wave of growth and really start to see some easy options to expand some of these footprints where people obviously do want to go out and spend money.”

He said the visitor economy was very important to Geelong’s prosperity.

“The annual expenditure was just shy of $2 billion from visitor spend, which is up both on the previous financial year and the year before that, so that’s a really healthy measure for Geelong to look at some of the attraction of investment outside of residents.”

Coming into summer, the Geelong Chamber of Commerce will be taking note of not only the forecast for good weather but also the region’s tourist offerings.

“We’ll be looking at some attractions such as some of the wineries and those that are outside the Geelong CBD,” Mr Crawford said.

The city says the figures show Geelong has rebounded from the worst of COVID-19.

“Despite the economic challenges facing the region, spending in 2022-23 grew and supported a thriving local economy,” Geelong mayor Trent Sullivan said.

“Our tourism market is flourishing as visitors continue to embrace everything our unique region has to offer, with a 15 per cent increase in spend this past year.”