Message for Mark

The headline from the front page lead story of the Bright Observer.

When you get elected to council your role is to listen to and consult the community. And, when you hold the so-called ‘portfolio’ of tourism & economic development - as Alpine councillor Mark Steven does - your role is especially to listen to and consult the tourism industry … and to represent their interests. Your role is not to come out with knee jerk opinions and ”recommendations” like Cr Steven has made on the front page of this week’s Bright Observer:  

Councillor recommends accommodation providers rethink excessive prices

Alpine Shire councillor Mark Steven, who also holds the tourism and economic development portfolio, said the annual rod run injected more than $2 million into Bright.

“Local businesses need to ask the question, do they want $2 million in town?” he said. “Other towns are trying very hard to get the rod run to go to them.”

He said each business was quite entitled to set their own price, but recommended that they did not push too far. Cr Steven said he understood why businesses didn’t want one-nighters, because changing beds and such became quite expensive. However, he said, the seven-night booking requirement was a bit excessive.

“Chances are, if the price is right, they might stay for seven nights anyway,” he added.

Comment:

I have to wonder if Cr Steven even discussed this matter with those he has the gall to lecture over “excessive prices”. What excessive prices does he think are being charged by Bright accommodation owners? I’m not aware of any ‘price gouging’ going on and I’d suggest our prices overall are reasonable and probably a lot less than other popular tourist spots like Daylesford, Castlemaine or Lorne or even non-tourist towns like Shepparton. 

As for the reported instance of one accommodation owner having a 7-night minimum requirement for the Rod event, well, that’s just one reported instance and my guess is it was probably a solitary holiday house owner looking to cash in on a big event. There’s no way that owners of established holiday units or motels - i.e. those who are actually in tourism - would have such a requirement and to even bring it up is just over-sensationalising what boils down to a fairly simple issue in my opinion.

The reality is that accommodation owners are easy targets for those who find it difficult to get a booking for the very popular Bright Rod Run and want to have a whinge about it. Here at GG we have, like most other owners, introduced a 3-night minimum, not due to any “profiteering” but simply because of the increasing demand for longer stays. I know when we took over GG back in 2002, most of our bookings for the event were for just two nights and that was fine until it became evident that the ’2-nighters’ (who would always re-book for the next year before departing) were actually denying others who genuinely wanted to stay for longer the opportunity to also enjoy the event. The 3-night minimum that we introduced in 2009 works well and is much fairer to all concerned. Not only have all our guests accepted it, most have even chosen to extend their booking to 4 nights.

I don’t know how this demand made by the Rod Club President - that rod entrants should be given the option of a 2-night minimum - can possibly work in practice. Maybe one of our larger motels, who was also quoted in the same article (see below), should convince the other similar sized motels in Bright to also take 2-nighters. Larger motels are certainly more suitable and geared for one or two night stays anyway but, as for the smaller self-contained establishments like GG, it is very unreasonable to expect them to participate in such a scheme. There’s a lot of a difference between owning and cleaning a small motel room and a 2-bedroom fully equiped self-contained apartment.

The proprietor of (a large Bright motel) said while it was up to the discretion of individual business owners, she believed a two-night minimum was appropriate for a two-day event. “Asking longer than two days is unfair to the hot rodders,” she said.

Getting back to Cr Steven, no councillor should be trying to tell business people how to run their businesses. And certainly not via the front page of the local paper. The letter from the Rod Club President in last week’s paper that sparked this issue was very confrontational and inflammatory. It tarred all accommodation owners in Bright with the same brush and presented an ultimatum that in effect said, “Meet our demands or we’ll pull the event away from Bright”. It wasn’t the right approach in my opinion. But a councillor with more nous - and who understands his role - would not have reacted as Cr Steven did. The appropriate response would be to take a calm & conciliatory approach and not add fuel to the fire, as Cr Steven’s words have done. 

Unfortunately, Cr Steven has made the situation worse by attacking those he is supposed to represent. Oh well, you elected him – I’m buggered if I know why.

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