The Chamber is seeking a suitable qualified person to redevelop its Website. Please refer to the attached RFQ document for details.

The Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce would love individuals and businesses to share photos and videos that have been produced as part of the Welcome Back Melbourne, We Missed You discussion that has started on Otway Community News recently.

Following on from Lisa Jayne Deppler’s initial discussion, Chamber asked Peter Bourne to write a Welcome Back for the entrance to Apollo Bay. Tiphaine De Fleurette Brown has also made a short video. Pictures of the sign and the video have been receiving favourable feedback on social media, and we now have the opportunity to drive a bit of a mini campaign from the grassroots community of Apollo Bay.

It is very clear that tired and battle weary Melbournians are not always being made to feel welcome in regional Victoria. Sadly, many of these people are holiday home owners, rate payers and participants in communities that are sometimes making them feel less than welcome.

The Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce wants to extend the hand of welcome. We want visitors to know that we are open, that we appreciate the sacrifices that have been made and that they are genuinely welcome here.

Copies of the video and a photo are available for everyone to use. If as many people as possible share the images we can spread the word as widely as possible.

If you don’t know what to write, you could consider simple phrases like Hi Melbourne, Welcome back we missed you, Welcome back and Love from Apollo Bay. Instagram users might also wish to add official regional tourism tags such as #iamapollobay and #visitgreatoceanroad.

Businesses might also consider a small boost on posts. $10 – $20 over a couple days can be surprisingly effective. If a number of businesses put a small amount of money behind the posts we might just build a bit more reach. If you’re not familiar with boosting, we would suggest setting your target audience to Melbourne people of all genders aged 18 to 65+ with interests in travel and the outdoors.

Thank you to all the people who helped us out with this!