The council held a forum on Thursday evening and covered how much shoppers were spending where, which revealed 13 cities and towns spent $182.1 million in Orange in the year to August, while Orange residents spent just $38.1 million in return.

Towns surrounding Orange relied heavily on its goods and services - Molong residents spent $23.7 million and received $1.3 million, Blayney residents spent $14.4 million and received $1.7 million and Millthorpe residents spent $18.7 million and received $1.3 million.

But even other regional centres flocked to Orange, with Forbes residents spending $13.7 million for a $1.1 million return and Parkes shoppers spent $13.4 million and shops received $2.2 million of Orange's money.

Business development officer Tony Boland said trend was not intentional.

"The big surprise there is Molong - there's a huge amount of money we draw out of it and not a lot of money we put back," he said.

"Specialised luxury goods is a market worth $102 million in Orange over a 12-month period, 38 per cent is from visitors and about 3.8 per cent of that is from Parkes and Forbes alone."

He said the visitor economy was worth $500 million a year, while Orange residents spent $328 million online.

"It's not growing as fast as we probably expected it would be, but it is growing," he said.

"The problem with the online figure is we can't separate out which is Orange online retail and which is elsewhere."

The council announced earlier in the week escape spending to Bathurst and Dubbo was lower compared to the money coming in.

The data was collated by Spendmapp by tracking bank transactions - results were scaled to account for cash transactions and expenditure on rates and utilities were not included.

Management consultant Amanda Spalding suggested pop-up shops to fill empty shops during large events.

She also asked for better communication with businesses to let them know when large numbers of people were expected to visit Orange through sporting carnivals and other lesser-known events.

"I have talked to a lot of retailers here who have gone and they said, 'if I known there was 300 people in Orange on Sunday for whatever, I would have opened on Sunday but when I open on Sunday, I pay double penalty rates and it's not worth my while'," she said.

Those in attendance were told the draft CBD upgrade document would be placed on exhibition in the new year.