With time running out on Sunday 14 September to have a say on Noosa Council’s draft Destination Management Plan (DMP) Noosa Chamber of Commerce and Industry this week organised an event for council to deliver a presentation on the draft DMP.
“It starts with the premise that we all love Noosa. We all have a shared responsibility of caring for it. All I ask that you do is keep an open mind,” Mayor Frank Wilkie told the 90 attendees.
“The DMP began a few years ago with a discussion paper. It came out in 2023 and evoked over 1000 submissions including a very fervent one from the Chamber so the Chamber’s been involved from the start.”
Council’s environment and strategy director Kim Rawlings told guests the draft DMP reflected the feedback they received on the discussion paper and they now wanted resident’s input on whether the draft had captured a true reflection of Noosa values. “We want to know did we get it right,” she said.
Kim said after years spent researching other DMPs around the world council deliberately chose to take a different approach.
“We will do it in a way that works for our community, that aligns with Noosa values, follow the legacy of doing things boldly and differently that Noosa community and council have done for many decades,” she said.
Kim said it was council’s intention to have a final DMP, a 10 year strategic plan, created by the end of this year, that would include an evaluation and monitoring plan and an implementation plan.
Council spokesperson Lyn took guests through the different aspects of the draft DMP, beginning with the discussion paper feedback which she said was predominantly responded to by residents, respondents identifying as a business making up only eight per cent of the total.
“We had 80,000 words to make sense of, 596 short surveys, 202 detail surveys, 66 submissions, a range of emails, coffee chat (feedback),” she said.
“We distilled that down to 84 actions and community solutions. Now we’ve got a draft DMP with 20 actions and another 20 tasks that we think are the right tasks.”
She said 70 per cent of things asked for had been started or were about to be started so council directed them to focus on the things we’ve been kicking down the road for the last few years, face them head on.
Seventy-eight per cent of respondents wanted the environment protected, she said.
The second thing that came up was traffic or traffic management, followed by visitor experiences that respect our assets.
We signed on to the Kabi Kabi principal to look after the land so it gives back to you, she said.
“Our DMP starts with what the community asked for, not what the tourists want,” Lyn said.
“Tourism can be for good. Council is proud of the work Tourism Noosa has done and the branding equity. It’s important to us that brand is managed well.”
Lyn said messages that came through strongly were calls for public funding of tourism, the importance of resident amenity, issues with housing supply and short term accommodation and overwhelmingly people wanted transformative change.
“Community wants their neighbourhoods back. We’ve taken that on board,” she said.
“What came out. I’m a resident. I pay to live here. I pay to enjoy the amenity but I can’t get there. I can’t get to my favourite spots. Make sure you charge everyone else who’s a visitor and make sure I’m OK.
“We’ve heard the events here people can’t afford to go to them. We need events that reflect community values.
“We heard time and time again stop marketing. Stop marketing and people will stop coming. We have evidence that is not the solution. This is about shared responsibility, what we want Noosa to look like in 10 years.
“We don’t want to restrict tourism growth we want to better manage the growth that is coming.
“We’re conscious of estates to the south – where are they going to go on the weekend, and then there’s the Olympics on our doorstep.
“The DMP vision is to manage growth. We can see what happens in other destinations when they get the balance wrong. This all started when the community started telling us we have the balance wrong.”
The event heard about the value of tourism to Noosa in making it what it is today, a desired destination with an array of high class restaurants, accommodation, events and services.
In local economic terms figures show tourism rates fifth in the top five industries in Noosa following in order of value health care and social assistance, construction, retail trade, and professional, scientific and technical.
When asked about council’s progress on traffic management Infrastructure director Shaun Walsh told the meeting council had collected real data on traffic congestion particularly in high congestion areas during peak times and they were in the process of updating the traffic management plan.
Shaun said they had spent a lot of time in past 12 months to come up with solutions including exploring mobility options, priority bus lanes and dynamic parking.
Noosa Chamber of Commerce president Ralph Rogers urged people to have a say on the draft DMP.
“This will affect your business and it will affect your town, it’s a planning document,” he said.
“We’ve got to get this community on the same page. We’ll only get to where we want to be if we work together.
“We are very supportive of a DMP because we understand if you don’t have a plan it’s chaos. We just want the best.”
