The magic of hard work By Grantlee Kieza, Industry Reporter
grounds manager Carey Gardner and our wedding and events manager Kelly McKillop.
Paradise regained is a classic English poem written more than 300 years ago but its title could have been based on the dramatic transformation that has taken place this year at the Tiona Holiday Park, just outside Forster on the NSW mid-north coast.
“We’ve had the park for nine months and so far we’ve spent $1.8 million in capital works and refurbishment. “When COVID hit, instead of slowing, we moved forward with a mass of improvements across Tiona including installing air-conditioning to 15 of our cabins and adding eight new cabins from a park in Newcastle that was changing hands - four on the lakeside and four on the beachside”.
Since taking over on December 18 last year, General Manager Margaret Shannon and business partner Rob Jeffress have overseen $1.8 million in refurbishments and they have had a startling effect. The park stretches for 1.6km along Wallis Lake on one side and the Seven Mile Beach on the other. “The park was ranked only two stars out of five on Tripadvisor but we are now sitting in the top five in this area,” Ms Shannon said, “not bad considering there are 14 holiday parks within a 20 km radius of Forster.” The accommodation park comprises about eight hectares on a property of more than 30 hectares of heavenly rainforest and bushland owned by the Community of Christ and originally designed as a religious retreat for families. “The Community of Christ owns the land but we are the custodians, the leaseholders who operate the park. We own the assets and the business,” Ms Shannon said.
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AccomNews - Spring 2020
“We’re also excited about four glamping safari tents that are on their way to us from Eco Structures and those luxury tents will be up among the treetops.’’ “The church bought the land way back in 1923 and members of the church from all over Australia would come to holiday here with their families. “The Church also built the Green Cathedral, a unique open-air chapel style venue down by the lakeside with a special charm enriched by the warmth of Green Cathedral pastor Wendy Ballard. It’s very popular for weddings and a lot of the couples who are married there take advantage of our lakeside conference centre, the Palms Pavilion for their reception and stay on site”. Tiona Park, which comprises 30 cabins, two houses, 14 lodge rooms and 78 sites, is situated on The Lakes Way at Pacific Palms, just a 10-minute drive
south of Forster and about 30 kilometres north of Seal Rocks. Ms Shannon has been involved with holiday parks for about 20 years and came to Tiona after managing the Big 4 Great Lakes park at ForsterTuncurry and a couple of years at a park in South Ballina’’. “I’ve come back to take over this park as general manager and I also have an ownership in the business,” she said “My business partner Rob Jeffress is well known in the tourism industry as the chairman of ASTRA (Australian Short Term Rental Accommodation Association) and we have some great staff led by our front office manager Katie Grayson,
REFURBISHMENT
Ms Shannon said while “previously the park had run down over many years and the guest perception wasn’t great” she and her team had worked hard to address and fix all of them. Before Ms Shannon took over there had also been “complaints around maintenance road noise, a lack of wifi and the mosquitoes, for which we now have a treatment plan that is working really effectively”. The park is in a mobile phone black spot so Ms Shannon has overseen the installation of wifi throughout the park. “We’ve also upgraded our beach villas so they all have beautiful big balconies that are almost twice the size they were before with beautiful sunny aspects,” she said.
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