Spendmapp Investment News
Have you been following our city’s spending trends by downloading the monthly Spendmapp reports at the Melton City Council website?
Be sure to check in around the middle of each month to download a copy of the previous month’s report.
The Council website will provide you with access to the six most recent reports and we’re always available to support you with more detailed breakdowns and analysis for your industry, or data from a specific area within the City of Melton, and can even provide work-hours and non work-hour comparisons.
The first three months of the year are generally characterised by lower-than-average spending. During our business engagements in March we have heard from many of our local businesses that this year has been no different.
The below graph shows this trend over the past five years, with a clear, two month dip noticeable after the December peak, followed by a month of recovery and steady increases throughout the year.
Based on the past two years of post-pandemic data, we can expect our economy to steadily grow in the months ahead and hopefully reach a new all-time spending high moving into summer.
Twelve months of growth
Looking at the first three months of the year in more detail and comparing the 2024 January to March period with the same time in 2023, we can see year-on-year increases across all expenditure categories.
The increase in Total Local Spend, from $564.3 M to $629.2 M is both encouraging and expected, given the City of Melton’s status as a Growth Area Council, including areas such as Rockbank – Mount Cottrell which was identified by the ABS as the fastest growing area in 2022-23.
When we look at the changes for each month and each expenditure category more closely, we can see that Total Local Spend is the year-on-year winner, with a growth rate of 11.5%, outpacing the relative increases in Resident Escape Spend and Online Spending. This is a positive take-away, as it shows that “buying local” is gaining momentum as the availability of goods and services improves in our city.
When interpreting the increase of +11.5% in Total Local Spend (TLS) it is important to remember that TLS consists of Resident Local Spend and Visitor Local Spend, with the latter showing a particularly healthy growth of 13% in the first quarter (year-on-year).
Visitor spending: where does it come from?
If you are interested in finding out where most of the Visitor spending that occurs in our city originates from, our monthly reports will provide you with the top three visitor spending suburbs each month. Visitor spending includes both, money spent locally by non-residents and purchases by businesses from outside of our city with local businesses.
For the month of January and February, Deer Park lead this expenditure category, followed by Darley and Sydenham, whilst in March (see image below) Darley took the lead ahead of Deer Park, with Sydenham again rounding out the top three.
The top three visitor-origin suburbs from January through to March this year correspond with the longer term trend over the past 12 months. From April 2023 until March 2024, Darley contributed $38.6M, Deer Park $34.4M, Sydenham $27.7M, Bacchus Marsh $24M and Sunbury $23.3M to the economy in the City of Melton.
During the same 12 month period the industries and business sectors that benefitted the most from external spending were Grocery Stores and Supermarkets ($118M), Dining and Entertainment ($98.5M), Transport ($85.3M), Bulky Goods ($48.8M) and Specialised and Luxury Goods ($41.6M).
Knowing your customers
If your business is trading in relative proximity to the five suburbs mentioned above, but currently does not generate significant sales from residents or businesses from these suburbs, it may be worth developing new promotional strategies that enable you to better meet additional demand from these locations.
Please reach out to our team if you would like to look at topics such as visitor spending or its counterpart, resident escape spending to answer questions such as these:
“Which areas am I not targeting and capturing to my full potential?”
“How much of the sales volume in my industry is my suburb losing to other areas, both within the City of Melton (Internal Escape Spend) and to suburbs outside of our city (External Escape Spend)?”
Contact the Venture Melton team to find out more and to book a time for a discussion of your circumstances.