Retailers are being urged to have their say on the future of business in the region at a meeting to be held at the Port Douglas Community Centre on Friday morning.

Bolt Burchill Tranter solicitor, Martin Tranter, will chair the meeting which he says will be the first step in establishing greater collaboration amongst local business people and sectors.

"What we're trying to say is this is the opportunity to create something different because what we're doing isn't working," Mr Tranter said.

The move has been made in response to the Melbourne Business School report which was delivered to the public at the end of March which called for a united front to return the town to prosperity.

The meeting, with the support of the Port Douglas Chamber of Commerce, will propose sectors, beginning with retail, create a cohesive association which would enable effective cross-promotion amongst all businesses within that sector, as well as cross-sector promotions.

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Mr Tranter said these sectors would then be able to works closely with an Economic Development Group, a yet to be formed entity which was touted at a recent meeting of stakeholders including Tourism Port Douglas and Daintree (TPDD), the Chamber of Commerce, and other business people.

"By arranging these sectors to feed back into an Economic Development Group, there is the ability for these sectors to voice their various industry concerns, number one.

"Number two, for facilitators within the Economic Development unit to be able to arrange, at the request of the various sector participants, additional promotions between the sectors.

"Existing organisations fail to a certain degree because we can't value add to the business," Mr Tranter said.

He said far from being a competitor for funding with the likes of TPDD, the sectors would have a "symbiotic relationship" with the destination marketer.

Mr Tranter envisages the creation of a "super power" that governments could ill afford to ignore when it came to requests for funding, and would be inclusive of other regional centres including Mossman and Cape Tribulation.

He said this level of collaboration between sectors is already possible but is not happening.

"There no reason this can't happen without an Economic Development unit, but the fact is it doesn't, and it doesn't because we're all so time poor, we can't spend the time to correctly market our businesses and arrange these alliances.

"In addition, having these sectors lined up allows us to then better structure our events and have the events inter-relating to our businesses and therefore increasing our revenue.

"It allows us to consider strategies for the town, for example a change in the Sunday markets, how can we inter-relate the markets with the rest of the Macrossan Street shops?

"Let's do away with this conflict situation and say 'how can we use each other?'"

He said now is the time to act and get engaged in the formation of the structure.

"Stop saying why, and start doing," Mr Tranter said.

While the retail industry is the first cab off the rank, future meetings will be held for other industries such as accommodation, hospitality, and tour sectors.

Retailers who would like to participate are asked to attend the meeting at the Port Douglas Community Centre this Friday from 8am to 9am.

For more information contact Martin Tranter on 4030 4800.

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