The Briefing. What is changing

October is the busiest month most South West operators do not plan for. September has the obvious hooks, wildflowers and whales and Open Studios, and November has Christmas pressure. October sits between them and quietly carries more visitor movement than either.

Here is the shape of it. The spring school holidays run until Sunday 11 October and Term 4 starts Monday 12 October, so the first eleven days belong to families and the rest of the month belongs to everyone else. Then three consecutive weekends of events land on the region. Cape to Cape MTB, Australia’s largest four day mountain bike stage race, runs 16 to 19 October. Beerhall at Shelter is in Busselton on 18 and 19 October, and the Augusta Bream Competition runs the same weekend. Tour de Gracetown and the Pavilion Hoedown fall on 24 and 25 October, with Coastrek Margaret River on the 25th. Earlier in the month there is Deadly Funny on 11 October, the Orange Party at Cowaramup on the 12th, and Megafauna Nightstalks at Mammoth Cave running through to 9 October.

There is no public holiday in WA in October. The long weekend was the King’s Birthday on Monday 28 September, which sits at the front of the school holidays rather than in October itself. So every weekend in October has to earn its own traffic, and three of them already have an event doing that work for you.

The quiet thing happening underneath: October is when summer gets booked. Christmas, January and the February long weekends are decided by people sitting down in October with a calendar and a browser. Your visibility this month is not really about October revenue. It is about whether you are on the shortlist when someone plans the six weeks that make your year.

The Campaign Plan

1. Split the month at 11 October. Until the 11th you are talking to families with a car full of kids and a fortnight to fill. From the 12th you are talking to couples, cyclists, event visitors and people planning summer. Write two sets of content now rather than trying to speak to both audiences with one voice and reaching neither. The handover is a hard line, not a gradual fade.

2. Pick your event weekend and build for it. You do not need a strategy for all three. Choose the one whose visitor most resembles your customer. Cape to Cape brings riders, support crews and families who need early breakfasts, big meals, laundry and somewhere to store a bike. Coastrek brings walkers who want an early start and a proper feed afterwards. Beerhall brings a Busselton crowd looking for the rest of the weekend. Publish opening hours, a named offer and your distance from the start line. Event visitors search for practical detail, not atmosphere.

3. Open your summer availability this month. If your Christmas and January rates are not published and bookable by mid October, you are relying on people coming back to check later. Most will not. Get the dates live, then say so plainly in a post. The businesses that fill summer are usually just the ones that were bookable first.

4. Harvest reviews while the season is warm. You will have more happy customers in front of you in October than in almost any other month outside summer. Ask on the day, in person, while they are still in the good mood you created. A review collected in October is working for you every day through the summer booking window. A review you meant to ask for is worth nothing.

The Tool

Ask an AI assistant what it recommends in your town. Open ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI results and type the question a visitor would ask. Where should I stay in Dunsborough. Best breakfast in Margaret River. Then look at what comes back and whether you are in it.

This is no longer a novelty. A growing share of trip planning starts with a question to an assistant rather than a list of blue links, and those assistants build their answers from your Google Business Profile, your reviews, directory listings, tourism association pages and whatever written content actually describes what you do. If your website is mostly images and adjectives, there is nothing for a machine to quote. If you are absent from the answer, that is a visibility problem you can still fix this month.

The Visibility Action

Your one to-do this month, and it takes about thirty minutes. Publish your summer dates and rates, then write one post that says they are open. That is it. Not a campaign, not a countdown, just availability that exists and is findable.

While you are in there, check three things. That your Google Business Profile shows correct hours for the school holiday period and for the three event weekends. That your website says in plain words what you offer, where you are and who it suits, because that is the text an AI assistant will use. And that you have asked at least five October customers for a review.

Thirty minutes in October decides how full January looks. Very few things in this business have that ratio.

Everything is connected. Make one good decision this month, and watch the ripple.

Forward this to a fellow South West hospitality or tourism business owner who might find it useful. 🌊