Lack of support for Tourism Whitsundays confirmed at polls

The recent Whitsunday Regional Council election gave us a unique opportunity to officially gauge local support for the troubled marketing organization, Tourism Whitsundays. Tourism Whitsundays says it represents all of the Whitsundays tourism industry, yet it's members make up less than 10% of local businesses registered.

The recent council vote confirmed the RTO's extremely low support is across the board, and not just within the tourism industry, with locals pummeling the Tourism Whitsundays candidates running for Mayor and Divisions One and Two.

Tourism Whitsundays fielded three candidates at the recent Whitsunday Council election - here are some interesting statistics on how they performed.

• In the running for Mayor, Chris Jacobs (Chairman of Tourism Whitsundays) conducted the campaign for Tony Maine, who came a very distant last.
• The candidate for Division One, which takes in Airlie Beach and Jubilee Pocket, Keli Medford, (Winner 2011 Tourism Whitsundays Marketing Award) was just 36 votes from coming last 
• Carol Van der Gaag  ran as the TW candidate in Division Two, which takes in Cannonvale and Cannon Valley achieved just 8% of the locals support.
• I have compared the Tourism Whitsundays 'Block' with the Grigor Taylor 'Block' - both fielded a candidate for Mayor, as well as a candidate in two Divisions. Support for the Taylor Block was twice that of the Tourism Whitsundays Block.

Local Support for Tourism Whitsundays
		Support	Result	Grigor Taylor
				Block
Overall	TW Block	11.07%	Last	23.27%
Mayor + Divisions		1,930 / 17,438		4058 / 17,438
Mayor	Tony Maine	10.55%	Last	19.94%
All Whitsundays		1,408 / 13,341		2,660 / 13,341
Division 1	Keli Medford	18.70%	Second
Airlie Beach - Jubilee Pocket		337 / 1,802	Last
Division 2	Carol Van der Gaag	7.99%	Second
Cannonvale - Cannon Valley		185 / 2315	Last

Final Count - Tally Board
Source: Electoral Commission of Queensland