The City of Swan is committed to developing sustainable economic growth for its residents and ratepayers so they can enjoy a thriving and vibrant City.
To achieve this we’re investing in the City to attract new businesses, improve employment opportunities closer to home and boost community wellbeing.
This gives our community convenient access to a range of local services, including retail, health and education.
The Economic key result area (KRA) covers three main outcomes:
- Sustainable business growth
- Accelerated economic and employment growth
- A great place to visit.
| Objective | Measure | Target | How we are tracking |
|---|---|---|---|
|
E1.1 Actively support and develop thriving local businesses and centres |
Percentage of businesses that indicate they like owning a business in the City |
Maintain or increase 85% |
90% in 2024 90% in 2023 |
| E1.1 Actively support and develop thriving local businesses and centres | Percentage of businesses that indicate it is easy to do business with the City |
Achieve at least 50% |
70% in 2024 62% in 2023 |
|
E2.1 Advocate and attract business and investment opportunities |
Value of non-residential private sector investment in the City |
Maintain or increase $104M |
$339,542,542 in 2024 $422,361,046 in 202 |
| E2.1 Advocate and attract business and investment opportunities | Gross regional product |
Maintain or increase $9.4B |
$12.36B in 2024 $11.7B in 2023 |
|
E3.1 Strengthen the capacity and integration of the tourism industry |
Total number of visitors per annum to the Swan Valley |
Increase 4.25M baseline |
4.4M in 2024 5.4M in 2019/20 |
| E3.1 Strengthen the capacity and integration of the tourism industry | Annual visitor expenditure to the Swan Valley |
Increase $426M baseline |
$544M in 2024 $430M in 2019/20 |
| E3.1 Strengthen the capacity and integration of the tourism industry | Percentage of visitors to the Swan Valley who rate their experience as positive overall |
Maintain above 93% |
93% in 2024 87% in 2021/22 |
A great place to visit
The Swan Valley is the oldest wine region in Western Australia and one of the biggest tourism destinations in Perth.
It attracts interstate and international visitors who enjoy the Swan Valley’s vibrant produce and experiences.
We ensure business and tourism growth across the City by:
- Managing the award-winning Swan Valley Visitor Centre
- Maintaining our Swan Valley website and social media accounts
- Delivering destination marketing campaigns
- Promoting tourism businesses through showcases and events.
Our, award-winning Swan Valley Visitor Centre (SVVC) website now has enhanced functionality and a better user experience, featuring a chat bot to better meet customer needs, high quality images showcasing the region and accessibility plug-in to cater to people with disability.
We provided over 200 industry partners with a digital style guide to foster a unified identity and help them create consistent marketing assets, streamline decisions and ensure essential brand elements are included.
Our continued growth of the Experience Perth Hills brand through social media marketing, website development and marketing campaigns, including the development of an Experience Perth Hills website made us a finalist in the 2024 Perth Airport WA Tourism Awards.
We attended Showcase WA in Canberra, attracting 1,000 visitors and resulting in a 25 per cent increase in website activity and $50,000 media value from pre and post event marketing.
- 4.4M annual visitors to the Swan Valley in 2024 (target 4.25M)
- $544M annual visitor expenditure in the Swan Valley in 2024 (target $426M)
- 93 per cent of visitors rated their experience as positive in 2024 (target 93 per cent).
We have a range of successful annual events and campaigns that we will continue to deliver, including Harvest, Entwined in the Swan Valley and the family-friendly Avon Descent Festival.
We are committed to exploring new visitor servicing initiatives and investigating new technologies to increase customer satisfaction and visitation.
Sustainable business growth
The City maintains a supportive environment to help local businesses grow, thrive and reach their full potential.
We have a range of programs and initiatives in place to boost business capacity, including:
- Accessible and inclusive business initiatives
- Professional development opportunities
- Facilitating local, interstate and international business opportunities
- Sponsoring small business awards programs.
Access and inclusion
We promote inclusivity by encouraging local businesses to improve their accessibility through our Accessible and Inclusive Business Initiative, which encourages businesses to identify, and then fix, any accessibility gaps on their premises.
We developed resources for businesses to use to check their accessibility, produced a marketing campaign that included a video showcasing three businesses who distinguished themselves during the pilot phase and shared key messages that highlighted the benefits of being more accessible.
Business Awards Program
We sponsor business awards to support economic growth, showcase local talent and build a thriving business ecosystem that is attractive to investors, residents, and tourists.
We sponsor awards distributed by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia (CCIWA), Swan Valley Regional Winemakers Association (SWRWA) and Wine Show of WA.
We also introduced the new Excellence in Access and Inclusion category to the Swan Business Awards to support the work done on its access and inclusion initiative that helps businesses improve their accessibility.
The City’s commitment to supporting access and inclusion was extended by sponsoring of the CCIWA Diversity and Inclusion Awards Gala.
More
The City solidified its commitment to supporting small businesses through its participation in the Small Business Development Corporation's Small Business Friendly Local Government (SBFLG) initiative, which formalises the City’s accountability and accessibility to small businesses.
Our third Swan Jobs Expo, held at the Midland Town Hall, showed growth compared to the previous event, with 300 job seekers and 29 employer stalls attending.
We improved our digital welcome pack we provide to new businesses. The pack includes information on the City’s commitment to support businesses and creates a resource for businesses to be more aware of the services, possibilities, and assistance the City offers.
Our Business Engagement Guide provides advice on how we interact with businesses and considers the purpose and geographical impact of the engagement and the roles and responsibilities of all participants.
The guide is in place to ensure a consistent approach across the organisation and helps the City plan the implementation and evaluation of all business engagement activities.
- 90 per cent of businesses indicated they like owning a business in the City of Swan (target 85 per cent or above)
- 70 per cent of businesses indicated that it is easy to do business with the City (target 50 per cent or above)
We are finalising a business advocacy model to support and attract businesses to the area.
The City will continue to boost local business through grants, support and sustainability initiatives such as the Buy Local program and Small Business Friendly Local Government Program.
Accelerated economic and employment growth
The City of Swan has many investment opportunities, so we have plans and actions in place to drive economic development and job creation to support our growing community.
We support economic and employment growth by promoting investment opportunities and enhancing our marketing to:
- Advocate and lobby all levels of governments for major infrastructure investment
- Support the implementation of WA’s growth plans.
We have created investment sheets that focus on the City’s commercial and industrial precincts.
These sheets will promote:
- Hazelmere’s strengths in freight and logistics capability
- Malaga’s strategic location, new film industry sector, and fibre ready status
- Bullsbrook’s potential as a freight and logistics precinct connecting to the northwest of WA
- Midland’s Strategic Metropolitan Centre
- and more.
We have enhanced the quality and volume of our marketing to bring further awareness about investment opportunities with adverts in high profile publications including Forge Magazine and Business News, an episode on televised destination program Our Town on the national Channel 7 Network, profiled multiple sectors and highlighted investment potential based on Midland’s strategic location.
- $339.5M value of non-residential private sector investment in the City in 2024 (target at least $104M)
- $12.36B worth of transactions from the sale of products and services in the City in 2024 (target at least $9.4B).
In 2025, we will launch a new investment website which will feature a virtual tour of the City’s major commercial and industrial sectors. We have been developing compelling content including vignettes taken from the Our Town episode, images and video to provide the virtual investment tour.
We will continue to lobby relevant government bodies and advocate for NBN, a study hub, infrastructure for Bullsbrook’s future development and relevant New Business Attraction and Opportunity Plan actions.
