In short;
- Noosa Council is suffering a growing reputation for bureaucratic planning not backed up by measurable performance.
- Tourism Noosa’s claims of visitors’ value to our economy should be met with more healthy skepticism.
- An increasing number of locals are questioning our Council’s funding of Tourism Noosa, a lobby group aligned with tourism businesses – but not always with residents.
Noosa Council has a long history of planning and consulting the community to get the plans right. Unfortunately, it also has a history of ignoring the implementation of the last plan when it moves on to the next one. Performance auditing as a concept has not reached here.
In 2017, the Noosa Transport Strategy 2017-27 was proclaimed but the Noosa community is still waiting for it to be implemented.
In 2023, the Corporate Plan, which is really a Noosa Shire Management Plan by another name, was finalised after consultation identified the Noosa community priority issues as firstly traffic management and transport. Tourism management was tenth in order of priority.
Since then the one part-time officer solely responsible for transport and traffic has resigned and not been replaced.
Despite the priority identified by the Corporate Plan, the last Council decided to focus on drafting a Destination Management Plan (DMP) for the tourism industry.
However, there is little doubt that our Noosa tourism industry is losing its social licence from the community because of the undesirable impacts from tourism.
Traffic congestion, Short Term Accommodation (STA), infrastructure issues, access to public places and the impact of events and other issues arising from tourism have been of growing concern to Noosa residents.
Noosa Council has long recognised that the over-tourism issue needs to be addressed.
In 2018 Council established a Sustainable Tourism Stakeholder Reference Group (the STSRG).
While the STSRG failed, the community groups involved agreed on the principle that “Residents’ quality of life should remain the priority focus for Noosa Council”
The last Council sought to amend the Noosa Plan to address some STA issues but these changes were delayed by the need for consultation and for State approval.
The Council introduced STA regulations to address residents’ concerns about these impacts of tourism, but residents would argue that many STA issues remain, mainly arising from the lack of effective regulation and enforcement.
To its credit, Noosa Council in the Discussion Paper (DP) did attempt to provide information on which to base the tourism impact discussion, but more information is needed on resident satisfaction or dissatisfaction and more realistic figures on the cost of tourism borne by residents – a side of the equation routinely ignored by Tourism Noosa.
The not-so-hidden costs of over-tourism
Council’s “Cost Benefit Analysis” in the DP estimated the cost of tourism to residents in this ‘back-of-the-envelope’ guestimate.
- $1.75 million per annum for insomnia.
- $2.23 million per annum for depression.
- $3.69 million per annum for anxiety.
- $1.76 million per annum for general annoyance.
The “value of tourism” information is largely provided by the industry and appears to overvalue the importance of tourism to Noosa.
The statistical ageing of Noosa Shire is well known, with 27.7% of the population over 65 (15,615) according to the 2021 Census or 36% of the population over 60 (20,663 people).
The capital and incomes brought into the community by retirees should not be ignored. In magnitude it certainly rivals the incomes of the workforce, costs
Noosa Council little in terms of infrastructure and service delivery, and supports much of the broader local economy.
What benefits do Noosa’s retired residents receive from tourism? They are aware that they contribute to the infrastructure used by tourists and that the tourism congestion frequently denies them access to that infrastructure.
While the discussion paper refers to Tourism as the Shire’s largest employer and quotes accommodation and food services at 3,970 employed and Tourism at 3,720, the Census refers to only 1,161 (just 2% of the population) in cafe and restaurants and 791 (1.7%) in accommodation, with the difference unexplained in the DP.
With a huge proportion of our tourism accommodation being provided by STAs, which provide mainly sessional jobs for cleaners and with on-line bookings being prevalent, the value of tourism needs rigorous examination. As 86% of STA’s are owned by intrastate, interstate or overseas, the majority of STA income does not benefit the Noosa economy.
Council should bring a sharper, more sceptical focus on tourism’s contribution to the Shire economy and not accept the tourism industry’s much-hyped figure of $1.7 billion, as this ignores the fact that much of this money goes to companies and individuals based outside of Noosa.
Tourists are using resources within the Shire mainly funded by residents.
According to the National Institute of Economic and Industry Research data in 2021/22, the total sales in Noosa Shire Council area were only $639.0m and only 6.4% of Noosa’s population was engaged in tourism.
If the DMP approached the tourism issues as part of the Corporate Plan, these issues would be related to Noosa as a “place” where residents live, a place which needs to be planned and managed for their benefit, and secondly as a place which visitors will recognise is good to visit.
The very questionable bag of money our Council hands to Tourism Noosa
The other issue Council needs to address in the DMP, besides funding of its implementation, is governance.
Noosa Council uses unpaid volunteers to support delivery of some of its services.
In the case of tourism, however, Council has funded “the industry association” (Tourism Noosa (TN) with $2.52 million per year.
An industry tourism association should not be funded by Noosa ratepayers, as the main beneficiaries of this spending are the members of the Noosa tourism industry.
Interestingly, when called on by Council, as part of the DMP consultation, TN members showed that they had little interest in being consulted about the needs of the Noosa Community.
The DMP should advise TN that the current funding agreement will not be renewed and that TN needs to develop a model for funding by its members.
Noosa Council could still contract TN to run campaigns such as the Plastic Free Noosa, but with strict KPIs to ensure that ratepayers get value for money. The current funding model does not work for ratepayers.
The funding currently provided to TN should be used by Council to implement the Destination Management process.
If the Noosa tourism industry is to maintain its social licence, it is important that the DMP implementation occur through a community-centred stewardship process to ensure a balance between positive visitor experiences and community wellbeing.
The tourism industry needs to work with residents and other stakeholders as protectors as well as promoters of the area. The aim should be to honour the past, shape the present and protect the future.
The stewardship process should be an inclusive process run by Council with measurable results and the ability to change, when needed, to achieve positive results for residents and visitors.
Noosa Councillors are still workshopping the DMP. Will they show the leadership and independence necessary to tip the balance back in favour of our residents?
This Post Has One Comment
Well said, hopefully the people in charge are reading this and react.