Extend the Weekend is Berry NSW's collaborative precinct program bringing together hospitality venues, accommodation providers, musicians, creatives and local businesses to create more reasons to visit Berry, stay longer and experience the village beyond its traditional daytime weekend trade.
After our successful first series of A Day Well Spent events, we're building on what worked- and what we learnt.
Round 4 sees the return of A Day Well Spent with three new spring music experiences, alongside a stronger focus on accommodation, destination storytelling, media partnerships and encouraging overnight stays throughout the season.
For our visitors, it's about experiencing Berry more like a local- stay another night, eat somewhere new, discover live music, wander between venues and make a weekend of it.
For locals, it's about keeping our village vibrant- creating more opportunities to connect with friends, experience great music and support the independent businesses that make Berry, Berry.
Berry is already one of NSW's most successful regional visitor destinations- three-time winner of the NSW Top Tourism Town Award and now a Hall of Fame destination. But even successful tourism towns like Berry that have "sold out the weekend" face challenges.
Our visitor economy remains highly seasonal and concentrated around daytime and weekend trade, while hospitality businesses, accommodation providers and the live music industry are navigating changing consumer habits, increasing costs and softer discretionary spending. Extend the Weekend was developed to tackle those challenges collaboratively.
Instead of asking individual businesses to solve them alone, the project brings a precinct together to test what happens when venues collaborate, musicians are programmed across a village, accommodation is connected to experiences, destination marketing supports a refreshed brand for the village and visitors are given some compelling reasons to stay a little longer.
The early results gave us good reason to keep going!
Across the first A Day Well Spent series, independent Localis data showed hospitality spending increased during every themed weekend. Hospitality spending was 34% higher overall, while accommodation spending was 37% higher than the corresponding periods the previous year.
Destination search interest in Berry on Google also increased by 8%, while visitor sentiment measured by reviews improved by 10%. Round 4 of UPTOWN allows us the opportunity to build on those encouraging results.
Berry NSW is contemporary coastal country village where heritage, nature, creativity and great hospitality meet. Extend the Weekend began with a simple ambition: let's turn some of Berry's softer periods into more reliable opportunities. Through
A Day Well Spent, we have been trialling a different approach to regional activation- one that is venue-first, music-led and business-centred. Rather than creating another mega event isolated from the town, musicians perform within the places people already eat, drink and gather. Visitors and locals alike move between venues, discover businesses they may not have encountered before and are encouraged to stay for dinner- or one more night.
This Round 4 funding takes that model further. Three new A Day Well Spent experiences will run across 2026, beginning with Reggae & Roots on 22–23 August, followed by Folk on 20 September and Around the World across 31 October–1 November.
We're also expanding our focus beyond individual activation weekends - working more closely with our accommodation providers and select ambassadors and media partners to tell Berry's story, encourage off-peak visitation and turn more day trips into overnight stays.
We’re tackling the problems that limit year-round resilience:
How we respond: three A Day Well Spent music weekends, stronger accommodation and destination partnerships, targeted PR and media, and ticketed events at the Berry School of Arts – piloting self-generated revenue while regularly activating this historic venue and putting Berry back on the live-music touring map.
Extend the Weekend is one of a network of Uptown precincts across NSW exploring new ways to create vibrant, sustainable going-out districts. Berry's project also contributes to a bigger regional visitor economy ambition: encouraging longer stays, off-peak visitation and locally led experiences.
The project aligns with the NSW Visitor Economy Strategy 2035, Destination Sydney Surrounds South's Destination Management Plan and Shoalhaven Council's tourism objectives.
What we learn in Berry can also contribute to the wider conversation about how regional towns support hospitality, live music, creativity and thriving town centres.
Uptown provides the opportunity to test and build the model - but the ambition is bigger than a funding round.
We're exploring how ticketed events, business participation, sponsorship, accommodation partnerships, media partnerships and destination marketing can work together to create a program with a life beyond government funding. Round 4 will continue testing that commercial model.
For example, Reggae & Roots combines a ticketed Saturday night event at the historic Berry School of Arts with a free Sunday music trail through the village - exploring how paid experiences can help support accessible community programming and more sustainable opportunities for professional artists.
Our goal isn't simply to create more events. It's to build a model that makes more events- and the businesses, artists and community around them- community backed, vibrant and sustainable.
We're interested in what actually changes. That means continuing to measure the things that matter to Berry's visitor economy, including:
The first series gave us encouraging benchmarks. Round 4 is about testing whether we can build on them.
Extend the Weekend works because it's collaborative.
Contact the Precinct Coordinator, Kate Dezarnaulds, to get involved, or sign up through Berry NSW to hear what's coming next.
