South West tourism remains nimble amid pandemic challenges

Hospitality operators on the front line during the past year of COVID-19 say they are finally seeing some stability thanks to the Perth market, but housing and labour shortages remain a Catch-22. While many operators have retooled their offerings since the first lockdown last March, which shut some businesses for almost three months, West Australian visitation has developed a steady rhythm. However, closed international borders mean seasonal labour has been non-existent, and the region’s popularity as a shelter during the pandemic meant it was hard to recruit workers, who had nowhere to live. Busselton’s Equinox restaurant director Peter Gordon said staffing was the single greatest hurdle. “We can’t capitalise on all the business that is there because of staff shortages, which is a very widespread issue throughout the whole region,” he said. “We have had to restrict our trading hours. “It’s not too bad at the moment because we are in winter, so we don’t need as many people, but over that summer-to-autumn period when demand was good, we still had to restrict our numbers and hours of operation.” Margaret River Brewhouse co-owner Iliya Hastings said his company retained 75 per cent of staff during lockdown, which allowed it to hit the ground running. “We have experienced a considerable upturn in trade since re-opening in June 2020 post-lockdown,” Mr Hastings said. Mr Gordon said each shutdown affected his restaurant for weeks afterwards, while Busselton’s Mandalay Resort co-director Scott Wilson said his site was “hit hard” and shut for 10 weeks early last year. “We’re fully staffed again now — not quite running at the same volume of staff,” Mr Wilson said. “Through the pandemic, we were able to look back at our business and make things more efficient.” Other traders had similar sentiments. They had the chance to rework their business models, or they were forced to by the changing market. “We are able to run the park the same as we did in previous years, just on a tighter budget,” Mr Wilson said. Hospitality operators also told the Times they were surprised at how many in the local workforce were happy to sit at home on Federal income support, which only further highlighted the region’s over-reliance on backpackers and foreign labour. A tale of two markets The pandemic also cast a light on the tourism industry’s traditional focus on bigger-spending overseas and interstate visitors, in a year when only trapped West Aussies were heading south. In Augusta, Turner Caravan Park managers Gary and Hettie Enderes said the past 12 months had seen a significant change in attitude among Perth residents “grateful” to visit the region. “They don’t take it for granted,” Mrs Enderes said. “They are grateful they can come.” While caravan park life had its rough moments — free time and alcohol consumption didn’t always mix well — Mr and Mrs Enderes said the past year had been a stand-out for the relaxed behaviour of guests and the lack of domestic violence calls to police. Mr Hastings said the past year showed his brewing facilities needed to shift off-site so he could better accommodate booming guest numbers. “There are definitely a lot of visitors who are visiting the region for the first time or who only visit rarely,” Mr Hastings said. “That’s given us the opportunity to put our best foot forward and welcome them with the Brewhouse hospitality brand, and I reckon we have gained considerable traction with the Perth market as a result.” Mr Wilson said the Mandalay Resort was thriving and “essentially back to normal”, with international borders closed. “We’ve got a good captured market at the moment that’s helping us, and everyone in our industry,” he said. “There are benefits to having a more WA-based market. Everyone is local, they don’t have the distances to cover. They are more likely to spend money in our State because they don’t have to pay money to get here.” Other operators said there was a definite benefit to having West Aussies holiday at home rather than Bali. But Mr Gordon said Australia’s closed borders also meant the challenge to retain staff would continue. “We will be like this for the next couple of years,” he said. “When the flights from Melbourne start next month, we are going to have bucketloads of people coming to our restaurant and we just won’t be able to help them.” Other operators shared tales of how they had retooled their offering since Perth visitors became the norm. Cape Lodge general manager Drew Bernhardt said Perth visitors had gone from 30 per cent to 99 per cent of guests at the luxury site. “We decided to only trade for five nights for the leisure market, which has been a great decision, and have been very busy, with many of our guests rediscovering Cape Lodge and the region in general, having not visited for many years,” he said. The region had strong destination appeal to Perth residents, which had helped it weather the COVID-19 storm, and interstate tourists had started to return, with promising signs for 2021-22, Mr Bernhardt said. Margaret River-Busselton Tourism Association co-chief executive Sharna Kearney said it was a tale of two different tourism markets, with some providers thriving, while tours and attractions would soon receive additional support. “There wouldn’t be a tourism business in the region that hasn’t had to make changes to their marketing and operations over the past year in response to the pandemic,” she said. Ms Kearney said the challenge for many operators was that bookings were unpredictable and hard to gauge going forward.