"Your customer base is your greatest asset," Chris Maconachie, from the 186-site Forster Beach Caravan Park, emphasised to Caravanning News.

"Caravanners talk up and down the coast. It is always healthy to revisit marketing ideas and to experiment, but radical changes can bring differing results. Bad results from an advertising campaign is expensive. And different markets such as high-rise apartments and caravan parks attract different clientele."

Mr Maconachie was commenting after some delegates at a New South Wales Mid North Coast Tourism meeting dismissed claims that holidaymakers no longer enjoyed returning to the same destinations year after year but, instead, preferred new holiday pastures.

Speakers at the meeting, which attracted representatives from caravan parks, tour groups and even a theme park, warned about shifting notions on the holiday habits of tourists.

They suggested many holidaymakers were now inclined to ask "where haven't we been?" rather than "where have we been for the last 30 years?"

The manager of the award-winning Beaches International apartments at Forster, Greg Randall, believed it would be a good idea for holiday operators to work towards renaming the region so that towns like Forster could be marketed as one stop in a sprawling region.

"Something like Pacific Coast Touring sounds almost romantic. If that were promoted in a big way, we'd all get a piece of a bigger pie," he said.

But Mr Maconachie was not convinced.

He said his three-and-a-half-star park, located adjacent to Forster's main beach and Wallis Lake entrance, regularly welcomed old faces.

"The high-rises might be seeing a different market, but I've been seeing a lot of business from returning families, some who've been coming to Forster for years," he told delegates.

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