Gold Coast Tourism Slides: Study
The Age
Saturday May 8, 1999
Olympic icon Ron Clarke recently warned local authorities to learn from the Gold Coast experience and keep high-rise buildings off Port Melbourne beaches.
Clarke, who owns a resort on South Stradbroke Island, just north of the coast, said: ``As soon as you put high rises on the beach you lose paradise."
Gold Coasters are outraged. ``You've got eco-resorts all along the coast and we don't have to have them here," said Mr Tom Tate, president of the Surfers Paradise Chamber of Commerce.
``You can have a holiday without swinging from tree to tree."
And the high-rises continue to proliferate, with plans for five more in a $400 million redevelopment planned for central Surfers Paradise.
Mr Tate has generated his own controversy, meanwhile, by advertising rooms for $2 a night at his hotel, the Islander Resort, on condition each guest buys a $20 drink voucher for the resort bar. The discounting has prompted a sharp response from the market's top end, with five-star hotel managers in the local media accusing him of cheapening the coast's image in a publicity gimmick.
The reason for the more than usual heat in this spat is not hard to find. Domestic tourism on the Gold Coast is in the doldrums and continuing its slide as increasing numbers of Victorian and NSW residents are opting to spend holidays in their home states.
A new study shows the Gold Coast is losing market share to other Australian destinations, with many interstate holidaymakers regarding it as too expensive, too commercialised and unsafe.
According to the study by the Griffith University's Centre for Tourism and Hotel Management Research, Revisioning the Gold Coast, the Gold Coast had zero average annual growth in the domestic holiday market between 1984 and 1997, compared to average growth nationally of 1.4 per cent. Although growth in the business-conference sector was stronger on the coast than nationally, this was ``not sufficient to offset the stagnation of the holiday segment", the study says. The number of domestic holidaymakers fell from 1.51 million in 1987-88 to 1.27million in 1996-97; the number of domestic holiday nights slumped from 3.48 million in 1994-95 to 2.84million in 1996-97.
Combining holidaymakers with business and other visitor categories, the Gold Coast's average visitor growth rate of 1.7 per cent between 1984 and 1997 compares poorly with the national average of 2.8 per cent.
The study says there has been a ``considerable" decline in visitors from Victoria, with visits from rural Victorians falling at an annual rate of 7 per cent.
A survey quoted in the study of 600 holidaymakers from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane revealed 46 per cent had visited the coast but did not intend to return. Mr Tate said the university study was a ``wake-up call" for the Gold Coast to do more to attract domestic tourists. He said the industry has been too focused on international visitors, with marketing dominated by the luxury hotels.
Despite their attacks on Mr Tate, a quick survey of local five-star hotels last week showed most have at least halved room charges in recent weeks in their bid to attract off-season visitors. A Gold Coast tourism consultant, Mr Alan Midwood, said the tourism slump was due largely to the growing success of NSW and Victoria in persuading people in their states to take holidays locally. ``Their marketing campaigns have been successful in that regard," Mr Midwood said.
The Gold Coast Mayor, Councillor Gary Baildon, blames the media for portraying the coast negatively.
``They paint us as boom-or-bust, as having a shallow community or whatever," Councillor Baildon said. ``In 50 years, they've never let up. We still get 2.7 million visitors a year."
Councillor Baildon said the figures for international tourism showed the coast remained a premier destination. Visitors from the Middle East, for instance, rose from 6000 in 1997 to about 20,000 this year.
The Griffith University study paints a brighter picture for the international sector, with the coast's average annual growth of 11.3 per cent since 1989 well above national growth of 6.6 per cent. But the fact remains that 70 per cent of Gold Coast visitors are Australians, and they appear increasingly less inclined to spend their holidays there.
© 1999 The Age
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