Noosa Shire has reached a crucial inflexion point that can be characterised as resident amenity versus tourism. The push-back by Noosa residents against overtourism is palpable, just as it is in many locales around the planet. The matter is central to Noosa’s future and the current council’s vision for that future. It may help to understand how we got to this juncture.

Tourism in Noosa gradually ramped up during the last century, from the 1920s when visitors travelled to Noosa Main Beach in boats from Tewantin to the development of Noosa as tourism hotspot in the late 1900s. The tourism dollar was viewed as manna from heaven, an essential means of invigorating the local economy. In many ways, that view remains extant, particularly in the minds of the state government. Under contemporary political dogma, in which the world is viewed through the reductionist lens of economic gains, it’s difficult to move beyond the notion that all tourism is good tourism. 

In December 2000, under the Bob Abbot led Noosa Council, a plan was hatched to further encourage local tourism. That probably seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. Under the oxymoronic name of Community Tourism Collaborative Board, twelve locals plus the mayor and a councillor began to meet. In June 2001, they presented their proposal, The Noosa Tourism Plan 2001-2011, to the Noosa Council. In that year’s budget deliberations, a Tourism Promotional Levy was first incorporated. As with all levies, the funds could only be spent for the purpose stipulated in the levy policy. The levy was imposed on local business properties, and the funds would go directly to a new Noosa Community Tourism Board to help it promote Noosa as a destination.

In November 2004, the council approved a change to the legal structure of the board, and it became a company, limited by guarantee, now called Noosa Community Tourism Board Limited. In the following budget, the name and scope of the levy was altered to the Noosa Tourism and Economic Levy. 

Over these four years, the council-created Noosa Community Tourism Board and a business-led organisation, Tourism Noosa, had begun integrating their operations. In September 2005, Noosa Council agreed to merge the two bodies to form Tourism Noosa Ltd. This now meant that funds raised through the levy could be directed to Tourism Noosa, and symbolically, the notion of “community” was lost from the nomenclature. Tourism Noosa was off and running.

Between peak holiday seasons, Noosa residents could once enjoy a respite from the influx of tourism. But Tourism Noosa viewed these low periods as a problematic challenge. They began encouraging and facilitating events to fill the gaps between school holidays. From sporting and arts to culinary events, the burgeoning calendar was viewed as necessary to keep the tourist dollars rolling into town. 

During the years of council amalgamation, between 2008 and 2013, Tourism Noosa was under existential threat of being subsumed into Visit Sunshine Coast, and the levy funds being raised in Noosa Shire were being used to promote the Coast more generally. But a successful de-amalgamation campaign rescued Tourism Noosa from oblivion. 

Across the planet, tourism was growing like topsy, and by 2016, many global locales were struggling with “overtourism” – a term coined in an article by travel industry news and research company Skift. In Noosa, there was no longer any real off-season respite for residents. Inevitably, the push-back from disgruntled residents began. Letters to local newspapers began to decry the loss of parking, the crowded beaches, and the impost of so many events. Even interstate visitors began to whinge about the Noosa experience. A 2017 letter to the Sydney Morning Herald stated,

“My family and I have been travelling to Noosa for more than 40 years. … I have watched progress in and around Noosa to bring it to a point now where beaches are overcrowded, there are lots of mediocre restaurants, overpriced accommodation and national parks which are loved to death, along with a constant push to bring more people in… Let’s go in the quiet times, you might say. Well it has reached a point where there is so much happening in the district that there are very few down times. I was there just recently in October and glad to leave after a week.”  (“Tightening the Noosa”, SMH Nov 11-12, 2017)

While the levy continued to fund promotion of Noosa as a destination, Tourism Noosa came to understand that the golden goose was spoiling its own nest. They switched their marketing to target interstate and overseas tourists. But the continual hyping of Noosa as a destination only added to its attractiveness for drive-in day-trippers. Meanwhile, the increase in visitation was accompanied by a new and unexpected factor – the use of private properties as erstwhile mini-hotels, facilitated by Airbnb, Stayz and their ilk. At the time, Tourism Noosa refused to take a position on short term accommodation (STAs).

As mayor of Noosa between 2016 and 2020, I began to raise the issue of overtourism, and the problems associated with STAs. I moved a motion at the annual Local Government Association of Queensland conference calling on the Queensland Government to help regulate STAs. That resulted in the then Minister for Tourism Kate Jones establishing an industry reference group on which I sat. In July 2018, the Minister issued a media release promising that her government would consider both a state-wide code-of-conduct for all STA properties as well as a system of data sharing so that STAs could be identified. Sadly, neither eventuated. 

During my mayoral term, council also received specialist legal advice on the issue of “existing use rights” for STAs. We inserted controls over STA proliferation into the new Noosa planning scheme (despite push-back from the state government) and began to draft our own local law to generate a code-of-conduct. Other local governments around the state, including Brisbane City, had yet to wake up to the STA nightmare, so we had no Queensland allies at this time, although interstate there were places like Mornington Peninsular, Byron Bay, and Busselton which were trying to contain the STA plague.

As mayor, I publicly raised the subject of overtourism and its potential impact on Noosa, even giving a presentation on the subject to the Australian Local Government Association annual conference in Canberra. I inadvertently inspired a beat-up headline on the front page of the Courier-Mail which hollered “Noosa to put up ‘full’ sign as over-tourism becomes an issue” (20 June 2019), which certainly set the cats howling. 

In March 2018, Noosa Council established the Sustainable Tourism Stakeholder Reference Group, which included representatives from 15 business and community groups. The aim of this body was to air viewpoints on tourism and try to come up with a joint social charter. The group met 10 times, and a draft Joint Declaration was penned but not universally endorsed. In many ways, the process was destined to fail. But this failure was important, because before instituting changes, one must take the community on the journey. We needed to demonstrate the gulf between resident expectations and those of the tourism sector. In my mind, that process was all directed towards a reduction in Tourism Noosa funding in my second mayoral term, an approach that was quietly supported by certain senior council staff. Again, it was not to be.

Both Covid and the 2020 elections arrived simultaneously. Under the new council, led by Clare Stewart, a muddle-headed decision was made to ditch the Tourism and Economic Levy on business properties, and instead increase rates on those same properties. As noted, a levy can only be spent on the very specific purposes dictated by its policy document embedded with the budget papers. By comparison, rates funds go into general revenue that can be utilised for any council activities for the benefit of all ratepayers and residents. Suddenly, $2.5 million from council’s general funds was being handed to a promotional organisation representing one sector of Noosa’s economy.

Arguably, ratepayers were being hit twice for tourism. Once because general funds were feeding Tourism Noosa and its promotion of Noosa as a destination, but also because ratepayers continued to pay for the impacts of more than two million visitors each year. Those impacts included repair and maintenance of roads, paths, public parks and toilets, significant additional waste going to landfill (a cost that includes methane greenhouse gas emissions), the local law regulations of visitors and illegal campers, approval processes for events on public land, and even free public transport during holiday periods. 

Today, Noosa Council is faced with deciding whether to continue to gift $2.5 million from general revenue to Tourism Noosa for a few more years – this at a time when the budget is being stretched by staff wage increases. The bigger problem is that we have no idea what vision this council has for Noosa’s future. Certainly, Mayor Wilkie has made it clear that he wishes to continue supporting the largesse handed to Tourism Noosa. It’s difficult to understand how his “residents first” election campaign slogan aligns with this approach. As noted in “Coping with Success – managing overcrowding in tourism destinations” – a research paper commissioned by the World Travel & Tourism Council through McKinsey & Company – the problems of overtourism include alienated local residents, a degraded tourist experience, overloaded infrastructure, and damage to nature. Noosa is experiencing all of those.

Unfortunately, perpetual tourism growth is baked into the thinking of tourism representative bodies and the Queensland Government. Meanwhile, experiences around the world demonstrate that overtourism does not deter more tourists, but instead the demographic of the tourists significantly alters. They become bucket-list visitors, not experiential visitors. In practical terms, the targets of TN’s high-yield marketing – the upper crust if you like – will become increasingly dissatisfied with their Noosa experience as they have to deal with amplified crowding (just like that SMH letter writer in 2017). And those low-spend crowds will continue to brave the traffic just so they can buy an ice-cream and tick Noosa off their bucket list. Indeed, international studies have shown that increasing tourist numbers may eventually lead to a critical mass followed by a downturn in overall tourism spend. 

As Akrivi Vagena from Hellenic Mediterranean University put it in a paper titled “Overtourism: Definition and Impact” (2021):

‘It is reasonable to believe that lots of people will offer a lot of profits, but in reality, that is what can literally destroy the business. An important part of the tourist services offered is to ensure a quality of experience for the visitors, but also respect for the destination in general, so it is crucial that everyone in the tourism industry is involved in solving this problem.”

Meanwhile, Tourism Noosa appears to be struggling to maintain their membership base, fees from which bring them hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. In 2017 they reportedly had over 700 members. Today they have around 450 members. Something is wrong with TN as a representative body.