12 minute read
The magic of hard work
By Grantlee Kieza, Industry Reporter
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.
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. “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, grounds manager Carey Gardner and our wedding and events manager Kelly McKillop.
“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”.
“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.’’
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.
“The park was built about 20 years before a road to the area when the only access was by Wallis Lake.
“We have sites that are facing the road, but we are installing road screening on both sides to add to the sense of privacy and cut noise too”.
“We’ve also remediated the roads, and we’re in the process of rolling out painting and other works throughout the whole park. We’ve also opened up our offi ce so there is a communal offi ce TV room space and we’ve redone our pool area too.’’
In keeping with the wider group commitment, management used local suppliers whenever possible including Foreshore Plumbers, Cam The Solar Man, “who does all our electrical work”, Allan’s Fencing, local transport company Pemtrans under Greg Lynch and his crew of builders “who have been nothing short of amazing”.
She said the park allowed campfi res over the winter and was “truly pet friendly, not just pet tolerant. A key source of frustration for guests is when a property says they are pet friendly and they fi nd they can’t have pets in certain cabins, certain sites or at certain times of the year. We are truly pet friendly, every site, every cabin, every day of the year.”
Ms Shannon said the park had also been completely rebranded to refl ect not only the park itself, but our passion for it.
The fi rst few months, were extraordinarily tough. “We took over on the 18th of December last year,” Ms Shannon said. “We had bushfi res in January and though we weren’t directly impacted a lot of travel was eff ected.
“We then had fl oods in February with 600ml in four days but at least “In March we had the start of COVID and we were closed to the public in April and May. So, the fi rst fi ve months were basically a write-off but it was also an opportunity to start the refurbishments while we didn’t have many people in the park
“We already had a capital works program in place for $2.2 million committ ed over the next three years but we decided to accelerate that program.
“With COVID threatening all of our senior management across the group took pay cuts so we could keep our full-time and part-time staff .”
Ms Shannon said focussing on customers through the "Five Ms’’ was the key to the park’s future success. They are:
1. Maintenance
2. Management – making sure processes are in place with very much a customer focus
3. Marketing – making sure that people are aware of us and that everything we do is in line with our brand – that we are complementing the natural environment not competing with it, and that everything we do is around our brand tagline of `fi nd your space’– understanding that people come here to holiday for diff erent reasons – some come to relax others to explore, some to connect with other people, others to get away and be by themselves
4. Money – everything we make we invest back into the park and …
5. Magic – which is the staff . We have an absolutely fantastic team who are really passionate about their roles and they show great initiative as well.
Experts in accommodation Wi-Fi installations
The team at the Beach Geek has already installed top of the line Wi-Fi infrastructure in some of the region’s most prestigious holiday accommodation spots and the work done at Tiona Holiday Park was no exception.
The expertise of the Beach Geek managed to secure dual NBN lines of the best quality to a tricky location away from the town’s NBN infrastructure.
The Wi-Fi solution for the park was carefully designed park was carefully designed to make sure the coverage to make sure the coverage across the entire park was across the entire park was excellent and reliable.
Our cabling specialists managed to make aerial and under road cabling installation seem easy.
The system is completely autonomous and secure with maintenance and troubleshooting available remotely.
A real time monitoring system sends alerts to technicians in case of failure and a robust reporting system completes the set of features of all our installations.
For more information, or to engage the Beach Geek visit: engage the Beach Geek visit: htt p://thebeachgeek.com.au htt p://thebeachgeek.com.au
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