About 48 people attended a tourism brand forum and workshop at the Hotel Canobolas on Monday.

Sydney-based creative agency The Canvas Group has been hired to define the region’s key features and to produce a brand to attract more visitors and potential businesses and residents for the Orange district.

Orange Region Tourism general manager Caddie Marshall said about one million visitors came to the region each year.

“Over the past several years our region has enjoyed terrific growth from both domestic and international visitors,” she said.

“We need to continue to build on this growth as this provides business and investor confidence in our region.

“To do this we need to work together and make it easy for visitors to discover everything our region has to offer.”

The Canvas Group surveyed 1002 people in Sydney, Canberra and Newcastle to identify current perceptions of the Orange region.

It found 58 per cent of people from Sydney/NSW had visited, or planned to visit Orange compared to 15.5 per cent of people from the ACT.

The research also found that 43 per cent of respondents associated the region best as a “weekend away.”

A further 31 per cent saw the region as a place to visit family while 26 per cent associated it with major events and festivals.