By Phil Jarratt
It might seem like a day at the beach – in fact an endless string of days at the beach – but running the Noosa Festival of Surfing, the world’s largest surfboard riding event, has never been easy.
For Josh Allen, who became event director last year after two years of handling the marketing involvement in the event for organisers World Surfaris, it was a bit like the perfect storm, but one that produced the wrong kind of waves. “It was actually a miracle that the festival happened at all in 2021,” he says.
We’ll get back to that in a minute, but first a brief history. The Noosa Festival of Surfing was born out of the existing Noosa Malibu Classic in 1998 when a group of surfing entrepreneurs saw an opportunity to build a cultural and entertainment program around the framework of the Noosa Malibu Club surfing event. It was an immediate hit and by 1999 was attracting surfing families from around the world.
Disclosure: The author was one of the festival founders and with his family company, ran the event from 1998 to 2002, and again from 2009 to 2018.
In 2019 World Surfaris, one of Australia’s leading global surf travel companies, took over the management of the festival and, despite erosion from a storm swell reducing the beach bar to a five-metre width, enjoyed a successful year with good waves and the inclusion of a World Surf League world tour event. In 2020 the WSL’s event calendar forced the Noosa festival to move forward to February from its normal March slot, which proved a lucky break, getting in ahead of Covid lockdowns and border closures.
And then along came Josh, who stepped in as Noosa event manager when his seven-year role running international travel marketing for World Surfaris suddenly became redundant as the surf travel business ground to a halt. As vaccination seemed to be containing the spread of the pandemic at the end of last year, Josh and the World Surfaris management team made the brave decision to push the 2021 festival back to May in the hope of getting competitors from interstate and overseas as the borders opened. Sadly the Delta variant put paid to that, but the “miracle” festival still went ahead, against all odds, and despite poor surf and crowd restrictions on social events, it was a credit to its organisers.
2021 was the final year of the World Surfaris initial contract, but despite the radical contraction of its business, the company signed up again, contracting Josh Allen’s Event Generals outfit to run it with Noosa Malibu Club assistance. The strange thing is that over its expensive involvement as major sponsor, World Surfaris has reduced its branding presence at each event, doing it for the love, rather than the media exposure.
Josh explains: “In 2021 international tourism took another huge hit and John Finlay (CEO) felt it wasn’t the time to be flaunting World Surfaris’ product offerings when no one here was thinking about overseas surf trips. But we are seeing a bit of a comeback now with people booking trips, so the profile is likely to change. World Surfaris branding will be more evident this time. In the US and parts of Europe, it’s already business as usual as far as surf travel is concerned. The Maldives in particular is almost back to full capacity. The US has allowed people to travel quite freely to most places for 12 months now, subject to PCR tests. The Maldives has been teeming with surfers, and it’s kept the surf tourism industry alive. A lot of companies would have folded without it.”
While World Surfaris made its own decision to pull back on branding during Covid, Josh is more concerned about the increasing restrictions on signage and other branding opportunities usually offered to surf festival sponsors. Josh says: “The authorities have taken a fairly strong stance about flags and branded feather banners, marquees and so on, on the beach. Perhaps this is understandable for some, but the reality for us is that it takes a lot of value out of sponsorship, making it even harder to attract large sponsors who help make this event possible. I also don’t understand that when you have a thousand Cool Cabanas on the beach, what’s so bad about a branded sponsor marquee?”
“I understand that Noosa has this luxe ethos and that some people are at pains to maintain that profile, but as a result ours and other events have had to adhere to rules and restrictions, such as signage documentation including a description of size and style of every sponsor flag or banner and only certain sponsors allowed to display branding depending on their level of sponsorship. This just makes a mountain of extra work for all of our events when people are already under-staffed and over-stressed. I’d like to see them just step back and relax a bit.
When asked about the small number of stakeholders who believe events are detrimental to Noosa’s image, Josh makes a strong case for the importance of a healthy event schedule, of which the surfing festival has been an integral part for more than 30 years.
“I believe Noosa needs events to continue bringing life, a vibrant atmosphere and a steady boost to the local economy, especially in these super-tough times. The surf festival has brought people from all over the world and created awareness of our coastal assets for three decades now. Fortunately, Noosa Council, including Mayor Clare Stewart, and the Tourism Noosa team are huge supporters of the festival and have helped me and my team create an amazing 2022 event.”
Josh, a lifelong surfer originally from Sydney’s northern beaches, is by nature an optimist, despite the sand bar that’s made First Point almost unsurfable for more than a year, and the building wave of the Omicron variant.
He told Noosa Today: “The way it’s looking right now, it’s going to be a rocky road but I’m optimistic. Entries are pretty good, sitting at 250 now which is pretty good considering how last-minute surfers often are. A lot of that 250 is Queensland based, which is similar to this year so less likelihood of cancelling. Our capacity this time will be around 400 which is a manageable number for the days allocated. I think we’ll fill up with competitors very soon, and if we don’t get a few cyclone swells to clean out the sand and return First Point to its former glory, at least we’ll have our Beach Bar back with its Bali beach club vibes.
“But I’m pretty confident we’ll have surf on the point. We’ve had only three or four days at First Point over the past two festivals, so fingers crossed. We’re overdue!”
