Western Sydney has the potential to become a standalone tourism powerhouse independent of established attractions around Sydney Harbour if the city’s new airport is properly leveraged, says Trilogy Hotels CEO, Scott Boyes.
With up to 10 million people expected to be “dropped” each year into the region from the opening of Western Sydney Int’l Airport, Boyes told travelBulletin the there are still a lot of missing pieces of the emerging tourism puzzle.
“There’s almost this greenfield site that you could create this world-class tourism precinct that covers the whole of Western Sydney, and then what that does for communities, for jobs, and for the broader economic impact of Western Sydney is huge,” he said.
As construction has progressed at the airport, major global and regional hotel brands such as InterContinental, Hilton, Courtyard by Marriott, QT, Four Points by Sheraton, Pullman and more have either opened in the region or started new hotel developments.
However, Boyes said in order for visitors to make Western Sydney the base for their whole trip and not venture into the CBD, infrastructure must be properly planned and mapped.
“It’ll be a case of being able to go to a convention centre in Blacktown, a stadium event in Parramatta, an attraction in Penrith or a convention centre in Liverpool – infrastructure needs to be mapped so we don’t have all the same replicated 15 times.
“Western Sydney is an interwoven piece of different districts and different areas that add different strengths and add a different piece of the story.”
“It’s about the opportunity that some of these projects provide, and if we don’t take advantage of it, it’ll be an opportunity lost.”
Boyes said another key issue was collaboration at a local council level, with the Trilogy boss urging councils to collaborate on projects that will benefit the region as a whole and not just their local district or constituency.
Stadiums were a prime example, with Western Sydney soon to be home to three world-class stadia of different sizes, with Accor Stadium at Homebush; CommBank Stadium in Parramatta and soon, a redeveloped Panthers Stadium in Penrith.
“Now it will be natural for a council to go in and say ‘Look, I want to build a great stadium in my council district so that I don’t miss out’.
“But maybe there’s something else that works in that council district other than a stadium, and then maybe there’s a way that businesses that rely on tourism can feed off both pieces of complementary infrastructure, as opposed to it being the same,” Boyes said.
“Let’s not just replicate the same council approach 25 times in all the different council districts – let’s do a masterplan for the whole of western Sydney.
“What do we have? What’s missing? What do we need? Let’s make planning easy on the things that we need. Let’s then go and source private and public partnerships. Let’s build this amazing infrastructure throughout the whole of Western Sydney so that when this airport does open, there is real choice of things to go and do and see, there’s a way to get around Western Sydney, like with the metro, rail and road, and the interconnectivity of all these different council areas is now greater than it’s ever been. You could create a really compelling story.”
