Are Aussie farmers our new tour guides?

I recently had the pleasure of another great trip to western Queensland to work on a product development project, which involved meeting local community members and many great farmers and property owners between Blackall and Yaraka.

This trip confirmed for me that we have a bunch of amazing untapped tour guides throughout regional and rural Australia just waiting to share their stories!

One such family owns large land holdings approximately 40km from a gorgeous National Park that is underutilised and untapped as a visitor experience. The property has a quality shearers’ quarters that is only used once a year by shearers, plus other great infrastructure, and endless space. Not to mention delicious homebaked goodies like the ones we enjoyed with a hot coffee under the awning of the shearing shed as we spoke about the district and its tourism potential.

As I left this property my mind was buzzing with ideas and a strong desire to work with the family to create an amazing tourism experience in western Queensland.

This happens to me often when I am in regional areas and meet farmers and hear their stories. The sense of connection, the rawness, the simplicity and the wide-open spaces – these make up the kind of transformational experience that many would enjoy (and benefit from!).

We can see that there is a surge in demand for on-farm and agritourism experiences - you only have to look at the latest campaign activity by AirbnB which focuses on farm stays.

My question is, how do we embrace these natural-born tour guides (I know, not all of them!) and support them to create authentic and transformational tourism experiences across regional Australia?

How can we break down barriers for them and create a viable pathway to diversify into tourism?

How do we enable them to show the REAL Australia?

Please leave your thoughts in the comments!

P.S. We love working with agricultural communities - check out this case study of our work with Clifton in southern QLD