The Southport Chamber of Commerce hope that Gold Coast venues will be decorated in flags of participating countries to make visitors feel at home ©Getty Images

An idea to make visitors from overseas countries feel at home during next year's Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast has been launched by the Southport Chamber of Commerce. 

As part of the "Adopt a Venue" campaign, bars and restaurants would be decorated in the colours and flags of different countries so visiting fans feel they have a familiar place to go to upon their arrival in the Gold Coast. 

It is also hoped venues would be able to broadcast events from the Games using satellite feeds from their adopted nations.

The Chamber, which claims to be the largest in the Gold Coast, came across the idea after one of their members had been to a bar in Brisbane, which regularly shows ice hockey matches for expat Canadians.

"We thought it was a novel idea to bring more people into the area," Southport Chamber of Commerce spokesman Noel Grummit told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

"What we hope is that it will last after the Games and those tourists will then have a place to go and feel at home when they visit."

House of Brews will be the official home of the Canadian team at Gold Coast 2018 ©House of Brews
House of Brews will be the official home of the Canadian team at Gold Coast 2018 ©House of Brews

The "Adopt a Venue" campaign will be looking to set up unofficial venues for fans.

Some venues, such as Surfers Paradise’s House of Brews which will host the Canadian team, have already been named as official venues.

House of Brews intends to decorate the venue in the Canadian colours, red and white, and serve poutine, a traditional Canadian dish, throughout the Games.

The owner of the venue, Sacha Kanaghines, lived in Canada for several years and said the venue’s transformation for the Commonwealth Games is a natural progression from the several Canada Day events the bar has hosted previously.

Some people, though, are sceptical about the potential success of the "Adopt a Venue" campaign, including Gold Coast 2018 chief executive Mark Peters.

"With regards to the television signals, unfortunately, the technical challenges of sending individual signals to single properties and broadcast rights obligations make this impractical," he told the Gold Coast Bulletin. 

"Also [Gold Coast 2018] is aware that a number of the visiting teams will, as they traditionally do at Commonwealth and Olympic Games, establish meeting places for their fans throughout the city, with Jamaica, Scotland, England, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and several others traditionally setting up ‘houses’."