Weather forecasts cause havoc
Leading holiday park and resort management company, FreeSpirit, says the last couple months of wild weather down the east coast of Australia, have impacted bookings over the Easter break.
Queensland and Northern New South Wales have been hammered with wild weather over the past two months, and some weather reports are proving to have had a negative effect on businesses, especially those in the tourism industry.
FreeSpirit senior operations manager Danella Rockley says Easter is the second busiest time of the year at their holiday parks, but travellers are a little nervous to book in advance due to the weather. “At Blue Dolphin Holiday Resort in Yamba, there is still has availability for the upcoming Easter break, which is almost unheard of,” Ms Rockley says. “Our camping sites are fully booked, but normally our accommodation is booked out months in advance.
“In all of our locations we ensure that there are plenty of all-weather activities, which is why it’s disappointing that the wet weather is deterring guests from taking holidays.
Ms Rockley says the misleading forecasts could be causing more detriment to the tourism industry than the actual weather conditions.
Fraser Lodge Holiday Park in Hervey Bay was poised to be fully booked 8-9 March but the mention of a possible cyclone and rain threw our guests’ plans into disarray,” Ms Rockley says. “The park was going to be filled with rugby players and their families visiting Hervey Bay for a tournament that weekend; however it was cancelled based on the weather reports. Lucky for Queensland, the cyclone did not hit and while it’s still currently sitting off Queensland out in the Pacific Ocean, it is very unlikely to make land. The sun ended up being out for most of the weekend, yet our park was almost empty due to the number of cancellations, making the news of the impending cyclone a real burden to our business.”
FreeSpirit Management Group was formed in 2004 to assist corporate entities that invested in holiday parks but did not have the expertise to manage them, and has quickly emerged as a leader in the industry.
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