SURFERS UP ... AS THE COAST EYES A GOLDEN FUTURE
Three Brazilian tourists walk out of the ocean after a surf lesson in Surfers Paradise. It sounds like the start of a bad joke - but what they had to say was no laughing matter
THREE Brazilian tourists in their 20s are smiling in their bikinis on the Surfers Paradise beachfront, fresh from exiting the water after a surf lesson.
They are on a month-long holiday around Australia, have been in Surfers for three days and, while enjoying it, say it hasn’t lived up to expectation. How so?
They had been expecting something rivalling Miami in the US, rating Burleigh and Palm Beach much better places to stay, saying Surfers is “too commercial”.
One of them says it should be “shoppers paradise” not Surfers Paradise.
But they add it’s fun and “we’re laughing since the day we got here”. However when asked what they’d tell friends back home about Surfers, one says: “Go to Byron Bay.”
That was eight years ago, late 2014. The trio kicked off a zany magazine feature I had decided to do, simply called “24 Hours in Surfers Paradise”, a fly-on-the-wall verbatim diary of everyone I met and spoke to from 5pm Friday to 5pm Saturday.
The idea was to take the pulse of Surfers before Schoolies arrived en masse.
It’s fair to say the Brazilian visitors were underwhelmed. Not everyone felt that way. I met a Chinese family with two young daughters who loved to skateboard around the precinct and to school, lived in
Hilton Surfers Paradise on party strip Orchid Ave and said the pollution-free life on the beach compared with Shanghai was “beautiful”.
They also felt it was “safe”, with the dad saying TV portrayed how “crazy Surfers is at night but I don’t think it’s the truth – it’s safe”. Everything is relative, right. Has much has changed? What would those three Brazilians make of the place today were they to revisit?
Would they be impressed by the new and improved hospitality offering across the board? From Hallmark’s venues, such as the new and improved Cavill Hotel to Artesian’s White Rhino, Surfers Pavilion and Cali Beach Club to Bob’s Brew
House, where Louis Vuitton used to be.
Surely they would be impressed by the recently unveiled Paradise Centre redevelopment, with $40m pumped into the frontage at the beach end of Cavill Mall and array of new hospitality options including Wahlburgers, a Thai restaurant overlooking the ocean and American restaurant giant unveiling its first beachside TGI Fridays.
Or would they still be underwhelmed and recommending people head down south to Byron? Would they still be in the “bulldoze Surfers and start again” brigade.
Surfers Paradise has changed a lot and for the better in eight years and probably moved on far more than people give it credit for.
But, sure, it is not perfect and can be so much more – and it needs to be as it is often the first impression visitors to the Coast have - 50 per cent of the hotel rooms are technically in Surfers. This week the Bulletin, in the lead up to Future Gold Coast on November 30 at Sea World, hosted a lively roundtable with city leaders and stakeholders, including from Star Gold Coast, Village Roadshow Theme Parks, Harcourts Coastal, Gold Coast Airport and Lewis Land Group.
What to do about Surfers Paradise was a hot topic. The councillor for Surfers Paradise Darren Taylor is working on a
The Gold Coast has a golden opportunity in front of it to really evolve into its own city of dreams
masterplan for the precinct to try to enhance it.
There are some who think it should be bulldozed, have the nightclubs moved elsewhere and start again. Others wonder if the nightclub set can ever truly successfully run in tandem with family friendly visitors more typically in Surfers during the day.
Other lively debate issues and key points included: The light rail rollout not progressing fast enough and it being a question where and when to extend it next, not whether it should be; “Brand” Gold Coast and how we are perceived and the opportunity to reposition ourselves in the world’s eyes in the lead up to the 2032 Olympics; Getting ambitious about airline connectivity and targeting the upper end of the market, such as Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines;
Enhancing the convention centre capacity so the city stops leaving money on the table by missing out on conferences and conventions which it is as we speak; Developing a much more comprehensive tourism
masterplan for the whole city, in tandem with an events calendar that avoids having the GC500 Supercars festival weekend on at the same time as the Groundwater country musical festival and Halloween, typically a bottler weekend for the Glitter Strip’s hospitality industry by itself. That is simply a taste but the discussion was lively and the sincerity for better outcomes for the future particularly the next generation was clear.
The Gold Coast has a golden opportunity in front of it to really evolve into its own city of dreams. And to change the view of those Brazilians tourists who were telling everyone to go to Byron Bay.
See you at Future Gold Coast on November 30. Save the date, book your tickets and be part of the city’s legacy creation and bright future.
GET TICKETS AT FUTUREGOLDCOAST2022.S PLASHTHAT.COM