How do we fix Noosa’s tourist problem?

As we begin debating the so-called Destination Management Plan, which arguably should be called the Resident Liveability Plan, I want to challenge some long-held assumptions. 

When thinking about the impacts of tourism, many people and most stakeholders focus on the problems generated by overtourism – primarily traffic congestion – rather than the causes. Focussing on public transport and traffic congestion suits Tourism Noosa and the tourism sector because it duck-shoves the problem onto council and Translink. It also helps promote the assumption that the problems generated by overtourism have ready solutions. But it’s all smoke and mirrors.

After hearing from many experts during my time on council, and looking at examples from across the world, here are my views (which you are welcome to disagree with):

1. Placing charges on car owners will fail as a disincentive to visitors, particularly day trippers.

When I was mayor, we had genuine experts in transport management tell us that introducing paid parking does not reduce vehicle numbers. There is ample evidence from Australia and many places across the planet to support this truism. Drivers faced with paid parking simply adjust their thinking and expectations. Nowhere has the introduction of parking meters reduced vehicle numbers on roads. What paid parking does do is raise revenue that can be used for other measures, but it won’t stop people driving into key areas and wanting to park (just as long queues of traffic and fighting for car spaces doesn’t prevent people from making the effort).

2. A congestion tax is not a deterrent

The same problem applies to a congestion tax. In some ways, having to pay for an experience can actually make it seem more worthwhile and therefore more attractive. A congestion tax has been in operation in London for many years, and it has failed miserably. As analysis in The Guardian just this year noted, “Twenty-two years after its congestion charge was introduced, London is somehow the most congested city in Europe”. One explanation comes in the form of “induced demand’ – when journeys that would previously have seemed to be fraught are given a veneer of improvement or possibility, it makes them more attractive. By introducing measures that seem to be fixing the problem, one is simultaneously inviting more people to use those measures, thus increasing, not reducing, numbers. (The same problem arises when widening main roads, like the Bruce Highway – it simply encourages more people to drive on the wider road and the congestion rapidly returns.)

3. Improving public transport will not automatically reduce private vehicle numbers.

Noosa is not a city CBD. Across the shire, buses cannot be cost effective and help residents to garner timely access to destinations. What’s more, local public transport is controlled by a monopolistic arrangement between Translink and the state government. Council cannot introduce competing forms of public transport. Even if council could convince Translink to introduce smaller, more regular, electric buses across the shire, it would not stem the flow of vehicles from outside the shire.

That is not to say that a well positioned and managed park-and-ride system won’t help. But that will require special arrangements with the state government to acquire large amounts of state-owned land on the main feeder arteries into Noosa to build the park-and-ride hubs (Cooroy state rail land, QPWS land at Noosaville, etc). The only way this is going to work is if council agrees on a long-term vision and begins negotiating with the state now. I can’t see that happening. In any case, there would have to be a real disincentive to prevent people ignoring the park-and-ride system and simply driving into key areas.

So, if adding parking fees is not going to have an impact on visitor numbers, and a genuine, functional park-and-ride service is in the too-hard basket, what are the options left? There are two levers that have the potential to stem the ever-escalating numbers of tourists, particularly drive-in day trippers.

Solution one – stop hyping Noosa

One relatively easy step is to stop marketing Noosa to tourists. Noosa doesn’t need to be promoted as heavily as it currently is. Individual resorts and tourist facilities already do their own advertising. Tourism Noosa needs to wind back their marketing spend – and arguably, their bloated workforce. Yes, I know the organisation argues that it has a “value-over-volume” strategy, and that without this strategy to target overnight visitors, the number of day trippers would rise as a percentage of overall visitors. But I believe that argument is self-serving hooey. Marketing of Noosa to interstate and international visitors by TN helps to reinforce the status of Noosa as a destination, and that status attracts people from Brisbane or the southern end of the Sunshine Coast, just as it inveigles visitors from Sydney and Melbourne. It’s all about prestige and prominence, not marketing targets. Reduce the hype around Noosa and you have a chance of reducing the day visitors wishing to see what all the fuss is about. And marketing is, after all, nothing but hype (as I’ve written before, Tourism Noosa sells Noosa as offering near empty beaches and zero crowds). There are various destinations around the world that have stopped all marketing, and Amsterdam has even run a “stay away” campaign for the sake of its resident amenity.

Solution two – control the chaos with a permit system

The other lever is to actively reduce vehicle numbers by having a booking and permit system, as occurs in many places around the globe which you simply cannot enter without a pre-arranged permit. This is the most common form of controlling impacts on tourism hotspots. The French city of Marseille introduced a permit system for its famed Calanques natural wonder, with the number of visitors capped to 400 each day. The Amalfi Coast in Italy allows drivers to use the picturesque coastal road every other day, depending on their license plate number. You can’t enter Yosemite National Park in the USA without an advance reservation. Activities in our own Great Barrier Reef Marine Parks are regulated by a permit system for commercial tourist operations. 

So how might a permit system work for Noosa? We now have the technology, including number-plate recognition software, to be able to implement such a system. There are just five feeder roads that take all traffic into the coastal areas of Noosa: McKinnon Drive, Cooroy-Noosa Rd, Eumundi-Noosa Rd, Walter Hay Drive, and David Low Way. These could each have number-plate recognition and/or e-tag systems with a visitor charge and fines that cover operating costs. Bookings for day trippers could thus be limited to a set number, while residents plus overnight visitors who have pre-booked accommodation would garner free access. (This would also have the advantage of ensuring that all Short-Term Accommodation properties were registered with council.)

Again, this would require a council with the gumption to work with state authorities, Tourism Queensland, etc. to sell the concept that Noosa’s exceptionalism as a destination relies on making the visitor experience exceptional. 

Understanding the “induced demand” principle, capped numbers and electronic entry permits would not be a disincentive, because they would actually work to make the place more attractive. It would be the limits placed on the permit system that kept a lid on vehicle numbers and day visitors. A permit system can be sold as helping to protect both the environment and the visitor experience. Plainly, it would also improve resident amenity. In my view, this is the only system that can guarantee genuine control of visitor numbers. 

Any successful changes to our current laissez faire approach to tourism will be resisted by Tourism Noosa, chambers of commerce etc, just as businesses in London initially resisted the congestion tax. But without systemic change, the alternative is to continue tinkering at the edges, wasting time on transport changes that will have marginal, if any, impact. 

The alternative is to allow tourism to continue to expand and resident lifestyle to suffer accordingly. In 2023, in an interview published in Noosa Today, one of the architects of Noosa’s Destination Management Plan, Andrew Saunders, averred that growth in Noosa tourism was ‘inevitable’. That’s the sort of thinking that will spell the death of Noosa as a place to live.

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This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Sounds very feasible to me Tony, you are the best. Keep up the great work and let’s hope the right people will listen.

  2. Great analysis, Tony, with some sound practical solutions.
    When will NC wake up to the fact we ratepayers are thorougly fed up with footing the bill to promote even more visitors coming to Noosa?
    I’ve read that TN estimate that tourism is estimated to contribute $1.4 billion annually to the local economy. That is a meaningless number with financial benefits going back to big business in the state capitals, not to mention offshore.

  3. You got my vote on solution two, Tony. Having been a local for nearly 30 years I’ve experienced first hand the yearly increase in visitors numbers. Yes, a booked permit system would work – we are used to register for a paid car park if you fly out of any airport in Australia, you pay if you extent your stay in shopping centers like the Sunshine Plaza etc. Or restaurant bookings, OK we don’t pay for the booking (except where some greedy restauranteurs asking for credit card authorization). Quite a lot of cities in Europe have banned cars, they have to park outside town and either walk for 15 minutes or so or take a shuttle bus. Unfortunately not practical here, as we Aussies are either to lazy to walk that far or for the lack of properly advertised shuttle buses. And yes, Noosa Tourism, Chambers of commerce and other stakeholders would oppose this system, but in agreement with Tony that’s the only workable way to increase the quality of life of us locals.

  4. I think solution two is a great start. Let’s workshop this with the residents and start pressuring the council to do something worthwhile to contribute to the success of Noosa.

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