Nighttime Economy: an economic development target for NSW councils
Fresh from looking at Canterbury-Bankstown and Parramatta, we noticed the City of Campbelltown is also in the middle of developing a nighttime economy strategy. And why not? Not only is it good for the traders running cafés, restaurants, bars, cinemas and speciality shops, a thriving local nighttime economy means we’re making better use of public (and private spaces) for a longer period of time. It also provides more opportunity for safe, fun social experiences. Better a healthy nighttime economy than lonely, darkened streets in your suburbs.
The NSW Government has got behind the idea as well . Obviously they’re feeling the pressure from Melbourne to create a reputation as a globally notable nighttime destination.
While Campbelltown is not in the State Government’s priority focus for nighttime economy activity (which, outside of central Sydney, emphasises Parramatta and Liverpool), the data tells us there is already a reasonably healthy economy there. It’s nighttime economy is quite stable and half of it is concentrated in one location, which must mean some economies of scale.
Details below.
What is it worth?
For the calendar year 2018, evening and weekend spending on Dining & Entertainment in the municipality was $276.5 million, of which 50% was in the suburb of Campbelltown, 10% in Leumeah and 8.8% in Minto. Ingleburn accounted for 6.8% and Ambarvale, 5.1% (Figure 1). This is considerably more concentrated than in Canterbury-Bankstown and even more than in Parramatta (from the last story you’ll recall central Parramatta absorbed about 40% of all Dining & Entertainment visitor spend in the municipality of Parramatta).
If we look at residents versus visitor spending across the LGA, the latter account for about one third (about $93m over the year). But this does vary during the week. On Saturdays visitor spending climbs to 37% of the $84+ million or so spent on Saturdays and Saturdays themselves account for one third of all Dining & Entertainment spending in the municipality.
But none of this is remarkable. It is an increasingly familiar pattern we see in nighttime economy analysis. It is, though, worth comparing the two main destinations in Campbelltown and Canterbury-Bankstown . They are both similar in size (central Campbelltown has a nighttime economy about the same size as Bankstown). And unlike Parramatta (which is about four times larger in spending volume), activity is mostly concentrated on Saturdays. However, Campbelltown is different insofar as the scale of activity elsewhere in the municipality is considerably smaller than in Canterbury-Bankstown.
Where is it heading?
We’re only looking over the last thirteen months, but there is a gentle upward trend in visitor spending across the municipality and in Campbelltown suburb. But accounting for inflation, the trend is negligible (Figure 2). While that may not be remarkable, it is a pretty stable trajectory compared with most other places we have looked at in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.
Over that same period, one other feature we noticed is that Campbelltown suburb’s share of total municipality-wide visitor spending declined a little, as places like Ingleburn and Woodbine appeared as small, but growing nighttime destinations. This may be a sign of a growing diversity of destinations. However, these other places are starting from a small base. Over the year, Campbelltown took almost 56% of visitor nighttime spending on Dining & Entertainment, compared with Leumea at 12%, Ingleburn at 5.8% and Minto at 5.2%. Woodbine is down at 1.6%.
Overall, it is a picture of a robust, stable nighttime economy focused on Campbelltown, and on Saturdays, when visitors from the nearby region arrive in Campbelltown (an average of 4,500 each Saturday night spending money).
One unusual feature
Whenever we look at Spendmapp data, we look for familiar patterns, but we’re also seeking outliers. For Campbelltown, the story is simple: it’s steady, concentrated and healthy: well worth investing in a nighttime economy strategy to stimulate development and diversification. And I’m sure if we looked into the data a little deeper, we’d find exactly where to target these investments and we could then track the effect of these investments over time.
But even without deeply interrogating the data, one slightly unusual feature does stand out. As Figure 3 shows, when comparing visitor spend on Dining & Entertainment for the three largest visitor destinations (by spend), the order of significance is Campbelltown, Leumeah and Ambarvale. But there’s something odd about visitor spend to Leumeah. Each visitor spends 1.4 to 1.6 times more on Dining & Entertainment than in the other suburbs. That is not something we see a lot of.
We’re from Melbourne so we don’t know the area well. So what is going on, traders of Campbelltown? Why do visitors to Leumeah spend so much more per person than visitors to Campbelltown, Minto, Ambarvale, Ingleburn or most of the other suburbs that attract visitors? Is it better restaurants (or just more expensive ones)? I’d be pleased if someone could shed some light on this. And meantime, I look forward to seeing what happens as Campbelltown rolls out its nighttime economy strategy.
Next time, I’m going to take a look at the nightttime economy landscape across the region, comparing the trade areas for Bankstown, Campbelltown, Liverpool and Parramatta. Who is going where and what sort of overlapping catchments are we seeing? I’m curious to know to what extent each council’s NTE (nighttime economy) strategy can complement, rather than undermine a neighbour’s.