Package It. Partner Up | Wollongong

Designed to help local businesses connect, explore opportunities and start developing visitor itineraries and experiences together. Package It. Partner Up. Creating Visitor Experiences Together | November 2026 What if the business next door could become your next great tourism partner? We know taking a few hours away from your business isn't always easy, particularly at this time of year. But sometimes the best opportunities come from stepping away, meeting other local businesses and looking at your offering a little differently. This November, Destination Sydney Surrounds South is bringing businesses together for Package It. Partner Up, a fun, interactive and practical workshop series facilitated by Despina Karatzias (if you were at our Visitor Economy Symposium, you will be excited about this!). Whether you're a café, restaurant, wellness operator, retailer, gallery, museum, accommodation provider, attraction, venue or tourism operator, you're part of our visitor economy...and we'd love your involvement. This won't be another workshop where you simply sit and listen. Over three hours, we'll bring businesses together to: • Connect: Meet like-minded local operators and explore partnership opportunities. • Create: Work in groups to develop local visitor itineraries for different markets, including families, couples, groups and special interest travellers. • Package: Explore practical ways to combine products, experiences and services to create more value for visitors and participating businesses. • Get visitor-ready: Understand where your listing appears on tourism websites and why your Google Business Profile should be current before the busy summer season. We'll dedicate two hours to practical, interactive activities and another hour to networking and making local connections. And what happens to the itineraries we create? This is where we're hoping to build something meaningful. Following the workshops, we'll start collating the draft visitor journeys developed across the region and work alongside our local tourism organisations to explore how these ideas could be refined, connected and potentially showcased through visitor-facing websites, itineraries and other suitable promotional channels. The goal is to help visitors discover more of our region while creating opportunities for local businesses to support one another. Four locations: • Wollongong: Tuesday 17 Nov | 9.00am - 12.00pm | Registration link • Kiama: Tuesday 17 Nov | 2.00pm - 5.00pm | Registration link • Milton: Wednesday 18 Nov | 11.00am - 2.00pm | Registration link • Bowral: Thursday 19 Nov | 9.30am - 12.30pm | Registration link We're also changing things up a little with how we support industry after these workshops. During February and March, Kylie will be heading out across the region for a series of informal industry coffee catch-ups. Working with local Tourism Managers, chambers of commerce and precinct coordinators, these sessions will bring interested businesses back together to continue exploring partnerships, pricing, packaging and the visitor itinerary ideas developed in November. If your business, chamber or precinct would be interested in hosting a local catch-up, we'd love to start that conversation with you at the workshop. Whether you're just getting started or have been operating for years, we hope you'll come along, share your experience, meet a few new faces and help us build stronger connections across the region. If you can't make it yourself, perhaps someone from your team would enjoy being part of the conversation.