Around the world, local residents are demonstrating against overtourism in their towns and cities. In southern Europe recently, thousands of people took to the streets waving placards, much of it coordinated by the Southern Europe Against Touristification Network. In Barcelona protestors wielded water pistols and set off smoke bombs. Anti-tourism actions in that locale go back over a decade.
Resident concerns across the planet include housing shortages, privatisation of public spaces, alienation from communities, and environmental damage from tourism. Over and above these problems is the overwhelming sense that community assets are being channelled into private profits. In some places, manifestos for “tourism degrowth” have been drawn up.
Clearly it is not the tourists themselves who should be the main targets of resident wrath, but rather antiquated government reliance on tourism growth as an economic driver. Here in Queensland, our state government has recently published its Destination 2045 manifesto, which sets out a “bold 20-year vision” to “champion 45 world-class ecotourism projects”, become “the event capital of Australia”, “work with partners to develop a pipeline of new products across the state”, and “increase domestic visitation to 110.4 million per year” while also increasing “international visitation to 5 million per year.” Put simply, the stated aim is to double the tourism dollars flowing into the state over the next two decades.
While Noosa gets hardly a mention in the Destination 2045 document – thanks, no doubt, to the many submissions from residents and community groups opposing overtourism in Noosa – what is perfectly clear is that many of the projected new visitors to Queensland will want to make “iconic” Noosa one of their target destinations.
There is no lack of evidence from around the world that simply increasing raw visitor numbers eventually leads to lower overall tourism spend. The reason is that tourists are more inclined to spend when they are in a relaxing environment rather than an overcrowded one. Indeed, I had the experience at Christmas of speaking with a Hastings Street shop owner who complained that there were too many visitors in the precinct, and this was having a negative impact on her shop takings. No doubt some retailers, such as ice cream parlours, do well out of increased numbers. But crowded locales attract very different types of tourists, and they’re not the high spending ones. Here’s a useful primer on the less-is-more principal relating to tourism numbers and spending. It features destination expert, author, columnist and keynote speaker Doug Lansky:
Even the Noosa Council staff submission to the state’s Destination 2045 process advocates for “tourism that protects lifestyle, natural assets, and community wellbeing,” while also recognising that “residents must be central stakeholders in tourism decisions”.
Arguably, the key issue for Noosa is the numbers of drive-in day visitors who impact negatively on the area and do little for the local economy. Pressure from day-trippers will continue to grow as the population of SEQ and the Sunshine Coast also grows, again under state government idealised projections and a neoconservative mantra of more, more, more development.
As I have suggested previously in Noosa Matters, the only effective way to stop an increase in drive-in day visitors is to establish a permit system for vehicles. Improving public transport, investing in park-and-ride or establishing paid parking will not prevent people from driving into the shire. We can already see that sitting for hours in a car isn’t a disincentive to visitors aiming for Teewah Beach or Hastings Street and Main Beach. Day visitors will always prefer to drive and park as close to their destination as possible. The notion of gross behaviour change that will result in everyone thinking differently about travel is pie-in-the-sky, fluffy idealism. We are not a city, and both visitors and residents remain wedded to private vehicles. Most people who want to see improved public transport support the notion in the hope that other people will use the buses or park-and-ride services and thus free up the roads for themselves to drive on.
And so how are those numbers of day visitors to Noosa looking? The latest figures from Tourism Queensland for the calendar year ending December 2024 show that 889,000 day trip visitors (44% of all Noosa visitors) contributed just 8% of total visitor spend in Noosa. If the state had their way, they’d double that number of drive-in visitors for little reward.
There is really only one hope for Noosa residents who wish to avoid being further overrun by the tourists, and that is to elect councillors willing to pitch Noosa to our state government as a different sort of destination. Noosa could be a showcase of modern tourism, where a bold experiment in tourism restraint can demonstrate no diminution and even a possible increase in overall tourism spend. Noosa could be offering the sort of experience that Tourism Noosa’s advertising promises but can’t deliver.
Imagine Noosa as a world-class exemplar of regenerative/sustainable/low-carbon/ capacity-led tourism. That’s a win for residents and the visitor experience. And that’s what we need our mayor and councillors to advocate for at the state level, not just the council staff. The council is our Destination Management Organisation. We need them to begin managing, not just funding, tourism. To do that, they will need to garner assistance from higher levels of government. That advocacy needs to happen now.
This Post Has 6 Comments
In order to deter drive in tourism Council could reduce the speed limit in residential areas to 50kmph, announce they were going to saturate the shire with speed cameras, install numerous sorely needed pedestrian crossings and introduce paid parking with resident permits in the tourist zones. If the market parking over the yellow lines in Weyba Rd last Sunday is any indication they could also employ an extra by laws officer to enforce existing regulations.
Alan, fyi the legal default speed limit in Queensland for residential streets in built-up areas is already 50kmp unless signed otherwise.
Let’s talk facts, not fiction. 8000 fewer tourists per week! In fact 316,000 fewer day trippers per year.
There’s a growing narrative being pushed that Noosa is suffering from “over-visitation” but the actual tourism data tells a very different story. And it’s time we cleared that up.
In 2018–2019, Noosa welcomed 2.5 million visitors:
• 1.2 million overnight visitors
• 1.3 million day-trippers
Compare that to 2023–2024, where we saw only 2.1 million visitors:
• 1.1 million overnight
• 984,000 day-trippers
That’s a total drop of 400,000 visitors per year or about 8,000 fewer people per week walking through our shops, staying in our accommodation, and spending in our community.
And while the spend per visitor might be up, fewer people = fewer opportunities for local business. This isn’t just a number on a page it’s pressure on retailers, cafés, tourism operators, and the hundreds of workers they employ.
So when groups like Noosa Matters push a story of “over-tourism,” they’re not just misinformed they’re spreading a narrative that hurts the very businesses that keep our town vibrant and economically viable.
Let’s stop blaming visitors. Let’s start supporting the backbone of Noosa’s economy,tourism, with policies based on truth, not ideology.
Thanks Rob Neely. Statistics are always tricky, particularly when we’re reliant on figures from Tourism Queensland without any real explanation of how they are arrived at. Does TQ, for instance, include figures from the thousands of Airbnb properties now in Noosa? Given how secretive Airbnb are with their data, I think not. And short stay has certainly flourished over the past decade arguably without being captured in data.
Yes, 2018-19 may have represented a sort of high point in tourism numbers being pre-Covid. Even in that financial year, numbers of tourists were up – 12% higher than the previous financial year for all visitors and 17% up for day-trippers. (Between 2012 and 2017, total visitors to Noosa increased by 28.4%.) Back in 2018-19, as mayor, I was already calling for better analysis of tourism in Noosa, through the Stakeholder Reference Group and elsewhere. Indeed, I used the word “overtourism” at the time.
Just because we have reached a certain level of tourism, doesn’t mean that is the baseline we should accept. During the council debate on the funding of Tourism Noosa this year, not one of the councillors suggested that Noosa wasn’t currently experiencing overtourism. Indeed, quite the contrary.
Also, this article of mine is very much about the pressure Noosa faces under both Destination 2045 and also population growth in SEQ. Those impacts are yet to be felt and it is fair to be concerned about them.
As tourism numbers grow, so businesses arrive to capitalise on that increase. Then, when tourism numbers exceed carrying capacity and start to impact on resident liveability, arguments such as yours arise to suggest that the businesses have to be supported by maintaining the new status quo in visitor numbers. Tourism is a fluctuating business sector, and any business that seeks to operate in the sector has to accept that truism. I accept that it is very difficult for politicians to be seen to be taking any action that may impact negatively on businesses. But there is a good argument to be put that improving visitor experience leads to better visitor spend (see video). Your suggestion that lower numbers of visitors equates with lower visitor spend doesn’t necessarily marry with global experience. It’s too simplistic.
And I think I made it clear that we shouldn’t be “blaming visitors” as you put it, but rather the problem is with outmoded ways of political thinking.
If we are experiencing somewhat fewer visitors now than pre-Covid, then well and good. But that doesn’t mean that the current figures for raw tourist numbers are accurate, and nor does it mean that we should be aiming to return to those pre-Covid numbers that you quote.
In short, the lived experience of Noosa residents is that we are currently exceeding acceptable limits on tourism numbers. Should we be aiming to deal with pressures coming down the pipe that will increase those numbers or not? You say no, I say yes.
Totally agree—but I fear our current Council’s senior management doesn’t have the capacity to manage this well. It would take a seriously skilled CEO to steer this BBQ boat crew in the right direction.
Noosa Council was the first local government in Queensland to declare a climate emergency back in 2019. Two years ago, they wrote a plan naming themselves as our lead agency for coastal care and protection. Since then they’ve dropped the ball on both counts: achieving very little, and failing to develop meaningful ocean education in our coastal neighbourhoods and businesses. From my perspective their current efforts are a form of Greenwashing.
As David Suzuki put it bluntly this week:
“We have failed to shift the narrative. We’re still caught in the same legal, economic and political systems… we have already crossed 7 of 9 critical Earth system limits. We can no longer pretend we’re avoiding crisis. It is time to build community resilience, localise food systems, prepare for blackouts, floods, fires and extreme heat. Governments won’t be able to respond fast enough as disasters pile up. Communities must prepare themselves, neighbour to neighbour, block to block, to face the chaos ahead.”
Local communities can do this. Local councils cannot. Pretending otherwise is just wasting precious time and public money.
Thanks Tony. Yes sensible preservation of our natural assets and the blessings they bring to our lifestyle experiences need to be preserved from visitor imbalances.
I assume Frank and the counsellors as well as Sandy have this focus, so our State and local council work together to preserve them.
I look forward to supporting a considered plan to control imbalances including Permits, high parking charges, offsite parking with ebuses etc