During the meeting a vision was cast for the city which included upgrading the Beenleigh Historical Village, utilising the rivers for paddle boat tours as well as renovating the Logan Park Motel into a resort for visitors to Alma Park Zoo.
Mr van Manen said he was excited about the taskforce‘s ideas and wanted Mr Baldwin to witness the passion from the local business community and Council first hand.
“We already have some great attractions which even some locals don’t know exist in our back yard,” said Mr van Manen.
“Earlier today I took Bob on a tour of some of our attractions, we visited the Eagleby Wetlands, the Logan River Parklands and the Beenleigh Historical Village.”
Bert said Mr Baldwin was very impressed with the natural beauty of the attractions adding that they would be very popular with Chinese tourists.
“Amongst the top ten reasons the Chinese come to Australia are natural beauty and clean air.”
“This certainly is a beautiful part of the world and after listening to the views of the Logan Tourism Taskforce today, I can certainly see a very bright future for Forde.”
“Bert is very passionate about seeing the area grow to include more attractions and is doing a great job promoting the potential for Logan to be included as a tourism destination.”
“We have some exciting plans to better promote Australian tourism destinations, and the many great attractions and events that just aren’t being leveraged as they should.
“The key will be supporting a thorough ongoing Destination Management Plan process so Regional Tourism Organisations can maximise visitation.”
“This was a 2009 Jackson Review priority”¦and a National Long Term Tourism Strategy goal”¦most recently it’s talked about in the Tourism 2020 document.
“I call on the government to use the upcoming Australian Regional Tourism Network annual conference (25 October) to launch this document. That more than anything else will help regions produce the best plans for their tourism assets,” Mr Baldwin said.
