Council partners with Telstra for weekly data insights

Whitsunday Regional Council and Whitsunday Coast Airport have partnered with Telstra to roll out groundbreaking location data insights to allow better planning for the future.

Whitsunday Regional Council Mayor Andrew Willcox said the impacts of Covid have created a fundamental shift in population and tourism patterns globally, nationally and regionally.

“We wanted to be proactive with future decision making and jumped at the opportunity to be the first Council in Australia to partner with Telstra and trial the data insights which provide crowd movement data of the adult population in Australia,” he said.

“The weekly insights graph on Council’s website will provide the latest datasets on static population counts, demographics and visitor arrivals.

“The estimate of the population is taken from observations of a sample of mobile phones and their connections to mobile towers in the region and is anonymised to protect individual privacy.

“The insights are invaluable in allowing Council, business and tourism stakeholders to better plan for tomorrow by uncovering new trends and behaviours.

“This has allowed us to add the insights Council dashboard to our website which is customized with population data specific to the Whitsunday region.”

WCA chief operating officer Aviation and Tourism Craig Turner said Council would not be able to be more strategic with their economic development decisions going forward.

“By having access to weekly information on who is coming to our region, how long they are staying, where they came from and what future bookings show then Council, the airport and businesses can get better bang for their marketing buck by focusing on the predicted future trends.

“The exciting part of the insights is it allows us to understand population by purpose as data is split into residents, intrastate visitors, workers and interstate visitors.

I encourage our business and tourism stakeholders to trial the dashboard’s weekly insights on the WRC website to get key information on dynamics and trends happening today.”

< ENDS >
For media enquiries, contact:
Greg Martin, Communications and Marketing Manager
07 4945 0617 or Email: communications@whitsundayrc.qld.gov.au