`tacky' Gold Coast Loses Its Holiday Lustre
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday May 8, 1999
The Gold Coast is tacky and too "touristy" and spoiled by shade from high-rise buildings, as far as visitors in Sydney and Melbourne are concerned.
Domestic tourism on the Gold Coast is in the doldrums and continuing to slacken as more people from NSW and Victoria choose to holiday in those States.
A new study finds the Gold Coast "appears to be burdened with a large number of highly ranked negative images", including "too many foreign tourists". The coast is losing market share to other Australian destinations because it is seen as too expensive, too commercialised and unsafe.
The study by Griffith University's Centre for Tourism and Hotel Management Research, Revisioning the Gold Coast, found the area had zero average annual growth in the domestic holiday market for 1984-97, compared with 1.4 per cent nationally.
Growth in the business and conference sector was stronger on the coast than nationally but "not sufficient to offset the stagnation of the holiday segment", the study said. The number of domestic holiday-makers fell from 1.51 million in 1987-88 to 1.27 million in 1996-97.
Combining holiday-makers with business and other visitor categories, the Gold Coast's average visitor growth rate of 1.7 per cent over 1984-97 compares poorly with the national average of 2.8 per cent.
A survey quoted in the study of 600 holiday-makers from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane found 46 per cent of them would not go back. Only 29 per cent found it "affordable" and 26 per cent agreed it offered "value for money". Only 21 per cent considered it safe and secure.
Last month the Olympic veteran Ron Clarke warned Victorian authorities to learn from the Gold Coast experience and keep high-rise buildings off Port Melbourne beaches. Mr 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."
Locals 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."
In any event, high-rise continues to proliferate, with plans for five more in a $400 million redevelopment in 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 accusing him in local media of cheapening the coast's image.
Mr Tate responded by describing the university study as a "wake-up call" for the Gold Coast to do more to attract domestic tourists. He said the industry has been too focused on overseas visitors, with marketing dominated by the luxury hotels.
Despite their attacks on Mr Tate, local five-star hotels had at least halved room charges in recent weeks to attract off-season visitors.
A Gold Coast tourism consultant, Mr Alan Midwood, said the slump was due largely to the growing success of NSW and Victoria in persuading people to holiday in those States.
The Mayor of the Gold Coast, Councillor Gary Baildon, blames the media: "They paint us as boom or bust, as having a shallow community, or whatever . . . We still get 2.7 million visitors a year."
He said the figures for international tourism showed the coast remained a premier destination. Visitors from the Middle East, for instance, rose from 6,000 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.
The fact remains, however, that 70 per cent of Gold Coast visitors are Australians, and they appear increasingly less inclined to spend their holidays there.
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald
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