It’s true to say that “In Noosa, tourism is everyone’s business”, (Observations from TN, NT 21 April) but Cr. Lorentson reveals her industry bias when she goes on to suggest that tourism means we all have to take what the industry association serves up to us, and that Tourism Noosa (TN) is “best qualified and able to protect our destination”. Far from it.
Cr Lorentson implies that it is expensive to get back lost experience and environment and to preserve these we need to “speak with one voice” or Noosa will “lose its brand”. Unfortunately, her suggestion that the one voice be TN because “we need to deliver a “co-ordinated and clear message to visitors” is preposterous, since the community is not getting a fair voice and it has no say on matters decided by the TN Board. Cr Lorentson, herself, is merely an observer there, and council doesn’t even have a say in board decisions, despite funding the association for decades.
With Covid came the abandoning of TN’s high value, low volume plan as interstate and international visitors dried up. The intrastate drive market was targeted, as it will be in the future if necessary. The past year has seen this market sector combine with returning interstate visitors to produce a visitor double whammy. It’s not surprising that the new funding agreement for TN insists on again targeting the high value, low volume visitor as the prime market moving forward, but TN has shown it’s adept at the pivot, which it will do again in the future, if necessary.
The Destination Management Plan (DMP), when completed, is now to be mandated as part of TN’s forward planning process. Currently it is being developed by a project control group that holds meetings in private and publishes no minutes. Meanwhile, the associated Destination Management Community Reference Group, with 19 members, is also not publishing public minutes, unlike the Tourism Management Working Group that met to discuss similar topics during the last council. We’ll wake up one day with yet another report asking us to have our say before it is included in council policy.
The directors of Tourism Noosa are obviously passionate about our environment and our economy, we all are, but Cr Lorentson, as the lone council observer on the board, needs to step back and remember her responsibility to residents daily impacted by the traffic congestion, lowering residential amenity, the financial burden of tourism infrastructure to ratepayers, and the degradation of our natural assets, including our parks and river system. It appears there is no plan to limit visitor numbers now, and our future as residents will remain as planning daily trips around the whims of visitors. Meanwhile, we are continuing to be hit up for TN’s wages and admin costs, marketing expenses, a “free” bus service, and high tourism infrastructure costs at a time when badly needed local services are being loaded into budgets of years into the future.
We are not at all like Colorado; if we stop funding TN, the sky will not fall in. Like Byron Shire, a similar strong destination brand, visitors will continue to come here. In any case, our brand is more than as a destination, it’s a safe, attractive place to live, set in a carefully preserved natural environment. Noosa today is the result of very many years of diligent community advocacy, backed up by council staff who have built in safeguards to the strategic plans that have guided all planning decisions.
TN’s control of the Noosa Brand has proved to be a chimera, since it follows market trends and will chase whatever market it can, when it needs to. It could be argued that the destination is nowhere near as “classy” as it was, with newspaper headlines of street misbehaviour, including violence, petty theft and auto theft, become ever more shrill, It’s clear to me that Noosa’s “brand” was created by the community, and is certainly not a brand that needs TN protection. Tourists are fickle, they will go where they wish. Thinking we can corral them here with the right marketing is a myth. And, if this means residents and TN speak with different voices, so be it. It’s not a healthy situation to expect both parties to agree on everything.
The new TN Agreement has at last mandated enhanced reporting and governance after decades of opaque management; based on figures, sure, but not necessarily on what is best for the residents. It’s important that TN is now expected to engage in probity which, along with accountability, transparency and effectiveness, has been very often missing in action.
