By a Noosa Heads Resident
As a long-term campaigner against short term accommodation in residential areas, a couple of weeks as a tourist in Western Australia has given me food for thought.
Like many travellers, as a minimum we wanted self-contained accommodation, a kitchen (or kitchenette) and sitting space separate to the bedroom. Apart from now mostly defunct motels and hotels in cities this seems to be pretty much what’s on offer and what most people are looking for in holiday accommodation.
Call it chalet, villa, apartment, cabin, farm stay, or whatever, the configurations are pretty standard, and if you’re a family you want more than one bedroom.
Resorts have long catered for this market, and we stayed in a few. The actual accommodation was fine, but you’re at the mercy of others in terms of parking and noise. We suffered through a couple of nights shared with a wedding contingent (horror!), managed to endure a room next to a swimming pool, and recognised that it’s pretty much a toss up as to whether the people in the units around you are considerate or not.
Outdoor spaces are shared and at times the behaviour of others can become intolerable (a bit like living next door to an STA). It’s no wonder many people prefer whole house STA. Our best experiences were in whole ‘house’, stand-alone accommodation.
That’s not to say resorts don’t cater well for some visitors, but many of Noosa’s resort offerings are ageing and, whatever the amenity or quality of the experience, there’s not enough available to provide accommodation for the number of visitors. Residents now find themselves living in suburbs that have become quasi resorts, or at best mixed-use. The tourism industry now relies heavily on this.
Apart from the drive market, attracting visitors to a destination relies on there being places for them to stay. In Noosa, as the visitor numbers have risen much of the additional accommodation has been provided by privately owned, whole house STA with attendant problems for community and neighbours. Tourism expansion has been at the expense of residents.
Laissez--faire policy, combined with industry lobbying and real estate profiteering, means Noosa Council has allowed a situation to develop where one of the shire’s major industries relies on ruining the amenity of its residential neighbourhoods.
The majority of Noosa’s available self-contained accommodation is now located in private dwellings in residential areas. What would be the effect of removing that option? Without a major increase in available resort or hotel units Noosa would only be able to cater for a fraction of current overnight visitors.
What would be the effect of 4,000 units/houses being no longer such a lucrative investment for investors?
There is the potential for two new five-star hotels in Noosa. They would probably cater for a different kind of visitor than those using STA at the moment, and while they might fill some of the gap, without STA Noosa’s tourism industry (and perhaps its real estate industry) would face a major upheaval.
As far as I am aware there is no other planning for major increases in visitor accommodation in Noosa. The RACV proposal currently before Council flies in the face of environmental overlays and the 2020 Plan.
Like many residents I’d like to see STA in our residential areas closed down, stopped, gone, but Council seems to be focussed on affordable accommodation for workers and in its planning to have considered no alternative options for visitor accommodation.
What does that say? Is STA here to stay?
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The question posed here is essentially what would happen if Noosa Council exercised planning control of short-stay letting businesses as it should have done and has failed to do. What would happen? The STA industry would be planned. Council planners would determine how many STA are needed in what location under what process where, and how.
For example Council would determine do we wish to allow whole-house continuous letting or having tried that option and seen the disastrous effects on residential amenity and local businesses does Council with knowledge now choose a more appropriate model?
Noosa has been destroyed by this current Council’s failure to manage short-stay letting businesses. 1 in 3 homes in coastal Noosa is now a STA.…