March 20 was two days after the disastrous fires in Tathra. My admiration for the staff further increased, after finding out the hospital was still on standby and they had been working long hours covering shifts for others who were affected by the fires.  

The nurse who looked after me post-op was not in uniform as she had been away for the weekend, could not get home and didn’t even know if she still had a home to go to.  

At no time did I feel that my care was lacking due to the nurses and other staff’s own personnel worries. Following discharge, I have been attending the Troopers physiotherapy classes in the gym at the hospital. What a wonderful service this is, four afternoons a week, under the guidance, encouragement and supervision of the physiotherapy staff.  

My husband also had a knee replacement seven months ago and he experienced the same level of care. Thank you again to everyone involved.

Davina Hewes, Tura Beach

John Richardson of the Bega Valley Shire Residents & Ratepayers Association (letters April 25) raises a number of issues concerning the management of tourism by Sapphire Coast Tourism (SCT).  Many of his issues relate to his interpretation of industry statistics.

The most useful readily available snapshot of tourism performance is the regularly updated performance figures available for each local government area on the Destination NSW website.  The figures are presented as four year rolling averages. Looking at John’s main concerns.

The shire’s visitor spend (2016-17) was $412m.  Every dollar spent multiplies through the local economy. SCT uses a common industry standard of 1.9 times (noting some key parts of the industry use multipliers of up to 3.7).  The conservative multiplier puts the value of tourism to the shire economy as $712m.  The shire’s economy is $1520m. The value of tourism is thus 51.4%.

Tourism is not a standalone sector in the national accounts. Its value is entwined through almost all sections of a regional economy. SCT does not to make its own interpretation but rather accepts the conservative data from Destination NSW’s reports and its own separately commissioned data analysis as a check and backup.

The second of John’s concerns was the visible measure of performance. Again SCT uses Destination NSW data. In tourism there can be no better measure of performance than visitor nights and visitor spend. The figures show the increase in the shire’s visitor nights since 2013 is a little over 5%pa and the spend 12.2%. This is a significantly better than our regional partners and far better than the national average for destinations relying primarily on the domestic market. For every dollar the ratepayer invests in tourism the regional economy has benefited by about $190 above the level of activity that existed when SCT was established.

If BVSRRA wants to apply itself to the perils facing local tourism, it might wish to consider the over-reliance on the domestic market. Domestic tourism is projected to grow by 0.9% pa. International visitor numbers are projected to grow by 9.0%. This year, for the first time, the numbers of international visitor nights in NSW will exceed domestic visitor nights (51% to 49%).  A ratio that will progressively widen. The ratio in this shire is 96% domestic, 4% international. A far better question for John’s organisation to pose is what does council, SCT, and any successor, intend doing about it?

Bruce Leaver, Sapphire Coast Tourism