An ultimatum that the Macquarie Point stadium must either go ahead in full or be scrapped entirely has gained strong backing from tourism and hospitality leaders, who say the multi-use venue is the key to transforming Tasmania’s winter economy.
Industry leaders argue the roofed stadium would be a crucial weapon in combating the state’s seasonal tourism slump, which sees accommodation occupancy drop by around 25% during the colder months.
Tasmanian Hospitality Association CEO Steve Old said he is fully behind the Premier’s tough stance on enabling legislation, warning that without it, both the stadium and Tasmania’s long-awaited AFL team will be off the table.
“I think we keep getting mystified about this is about AFL football. It’s about all the other things that can also bring to Tasmania and all the spin-offs that it’s going to be,” he said.
“We’ve got to get away from just talking about this about being AFL football. This is about all the other things that this stadium can bring to Tasmania with concerts, major events, business events.”
Old, who also chairs the JackJumpers, said basketball could get in on the action too.
“We might even get a JackJumpers game under the roof and get 15,000 Tasmanians watching the JackJumpers, which would be fantastic,” he said.
Frances Hutchinson from Business Events Tasmania said the lack of a 1,500 seat conference venue, which the stadium and Goods Shed would provide, has the state being ruled out as an option immediately.
“This increased capacity would allow us to bid on an estimated 110 additional conferences, bringing 140,000 delegates and generating $332 million in direct expenditure for the state,” she said.
The proposed roofed stadium would allow events to run year-round, regardless of the weather – a major drawcard, according to Tourism Industry Council Tasmania CEO Amy Hills.
“We’re trying desperately to get people here over winter to smooth out our seasonality, to support our businesses so that they can continue employing Tasmanians,” Hills said.
“We don’t believe it’s a Hobart-centric thing at all because if you think about some of our big demand drivers, if you think about Cradle Mountain or Mona, what their role is is they get people wanting to come to Tasmania in the first place.”
“Then our visitors will come, they’ll explore a great experience at Cradle or Mona but they’ll also hopefully explore our entire state and if they don’t do that in the first trip then they’ll get a thirst to come back.”
The state government is expected to introduce the enabling legislation to parliament as early as next week, setting the stage for a make-or-break vote on the stadium.
The legislation won’t have support of the Greens, who yesterday wrote to the AFL CEO urging him to drop the stadium requirement for Tasmania to secure a licence for the Tasmania Devils team.
More on this story: Federal Group warns Macquarie Point stadium would ‘loom over’ waterfront hotels
