Online Event Approval Portal

CouncilsDestination DevelopmentStrategic Activation

Jan 14

Written By Cristy Houghton

Fraser Coast Regional Council

Queensland’s Fraser Coast is the home of World Heritage-listed natural gems, the world’s largest sand island, K’gari (Fraser Island), coral cay Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort, Maryborough’s quirky Mary Poppins Festival, and Hervey Bay Whale Festival, held at the best place to watch humpback whales and their babies play.

Project purpose

Fraser Coast Regional Council’s event regulation process was at times confusing and frustrating for both event organisers and Council’s staff.

As part of Tilma Group’s development of a Regional Events Strategy for Council, we undertook mystery shopping to better understand how ‘event friendly’ the Council’s process was.

Key learnings were

Council’s website was not user-friendly for an external event organiser looking to host an event in Fraser Coast, or for a local event organiser. There was no dedicated event support section and information was confusing and clunky.
Council reception staff were not clear on who to direct event enquires to.
Getting to the ‘event concierge’ was a long and challenging process with phone calls and emails, however once this person was reached, they were very helpful.

Internal departments were confused and frustrated by the event approval process.
Events were being approved for Council’s grant funding before they had gained approval.

Project overview

As one of the recommendations in the Regional Events Strategy, Council undertook a streamlining of its event approval application process to make it easier for event organisers to host events in the region, and reduce the paperwork barrier to some events taking place at all.

Project outcomes

The Council Officer who manages the event approvals process found the process is much improved now that it is all online. Though getting the forms set up on Smartygrants took longer than expected, now the online process is saving heaps of time and the various teams in Council associated with event approvals are much happier with the process.

See Fraser Coast’s

Referee

Michaela Davis
Administration Officer – Events Advisory Service 
Tourism, Economic Development and Partnerships
Fraser Coast Regional Council
0436 810 011  
events@frasercoast.qld.gov.au
www.frasercoast.qld.gov.au

Cristy Houghton

Cristy's unique career has taken her from country NSW to the city lights of Clarendon Street South Melbourne and back again. With an early career in radio as a copywriter and creative strategist, she is now a Jill of all trades as a graphic designer, website builder, blog writer, video editor, social media manager, marketing strategist and more.

In fact, give her any task and this chick will figure out how to do it! Go on, we dare you!

No, really, we DARE you!!

Cristy has won two Australian Commercial Radio Awards (ACRAs) for Best Ad and Best Sales Promotion, and even has an 'Employee of the Year' certificate with her name on it.

Cristy and her husband James have traveled extensively through Russia, China and South East Asia, and have two fur-babies, Sooty (cat) and Panda (puppy). Cristy loves drinking coffee, meeting people to drink coffee, coffee tasting and coffee flavoured cocktails. She also enjoys road trips, TED Talks and watching cat videos on youtube.

http://www.embarketing.com.au