1,200 New Rooms Needed By 2032 For Capricorn Coast and Rockhampton!
Posted on October 9th, 2024
Population growth combined with visitor growth requires additional housing as well as short term commercial accommodation on the Capricorn Coast and Rockhampton.
In fact, according to the region’s peak tourism and economic development organisation, our region is desperate for new short term accommodation, as units are being lost to permanent rentals, particularly along the coast, when they were once in hotel letting pools.
Capricorn Enterprise CEO Mary Carroll said “When demand is higher than supply, it’s a good problem to have, but not when we cannot keep pace with sustainable supply.”
“Independent research has revealed that we need 1,200 additional short term rooms to meet current and future demand to the year 2032 on the Capricorn Coast and Rockhampton.”
“Salt Yeppoon was the last brand new short term accommodation to open in February 2016, Empire Apartment Hotel opened in January 2015, Quality Hotel Rockhampton (formerly Kortes Resort) opened in the same year, with Oshen Yeppoon opening in April 2014.”
“We have had no new builds of significant supply in over eight years, not because of the lack of investment interest, but construction cost increases of up to 40% over the past few years.”
“The cost of construction must be overcome or we will see even more short term accommodation rooms converted to long term.”
“We currently have about 2,500 commercial rooms which offer about 4,600 beds which just isn’t enough to meet current and future demand.”
“There are some fantastic development sites within the CBDs on the market in Rockhampton and Yeppoon which are ripe for short term accommodation, along with existing approvals including at Emu Park.”
The latest Tourism Research Australia statistics to the year ending June 2024 reflect the growing visitor numbers to the region.
Domestic visitors to the Capricorn Coast and Rockhampton totalled 833,000 visitors staying for 2.68 Million nights, spending $731 Million with an average length of stay of 3.2 nights to the year ending June 2024.
Capricorn Enterprise CEO Mary Carroll said “It is great to see that visitor numbers and visitor expenditure have increased year on year, as well as since 2019, and in our three year trend statistics.”
“We saw some welcome but unusual activity during the state border closures, with domestic overnight visitor expenditure doubling in 2022 compared to 2021 on the Capricorn Coast (Livingstone Shire) alone, which has attributed to new visitors discovering our destination.”
“What is impressive with these most recent statistics, is that visitors on holiday to the year ending June 2024 represented forty percent (40%) of total visitors to the region, when historically this has been roughly one third, equally with business visitors and those visiting friends and relatives (VFR). The growth in holiday visitors to our region is an 8.9% three year trend change which means people are well and truly choosing the Capricorn Coast and Rockhampton.”
“Many factors are attributable to this growth including destination marketing, more operators contracted with tourism trade, major events including Beef24 in May, major sporting carnivals including football and pickleball, as well as major events and festivals from Rocky to Yeppoon, Emu Park to Great Keppel Island.”
“Our business visitation also remains very strong, with billions of dollars of public infrastructure underway including the Rockhampton Ring Road, energy projects as well as a large fly in fly out resources workforce, travelling through the Rockhampton regional airport.”
“Visiting friends and relatives (VFR) visitation will always play a major role in our statistics, with health and education the two largest employers in Rockhampton, as well as thousands of mining families who call the Capricorn Coast and Rocky their home.”
International visitors to the region have seen a 61% recovery since 2019, with 37,000 visitors staying 319,000 nights with an average length of stay of 8.7 nights.
Ms Carroll said “The majority of our international visitors are on holiday; they understandably stay longer and spend more.”
