Broome may be bracing for another bumper tourism season, but this year is likely to test hospitality operators more than ever due to a shortage of affordable accommodation for workers.
Broome may be bracing for another bumper tourism season, but this year is likely to test hospitality operators more than ever due to a shortage of affordable accommodation for workers.
The resources boom is also creating headaches for Broome, with an increase in the number of mining and related employees living in town also driving up rents and property prices.
The region’s population swells between June and August as visitors from all over the world flock to the pristine beaches and warm weather.
More than 329,000 people flew in and out of Broome Airport last year, an increase of 50 per cent in three years.
Property in Broome is booming. Tourism in Broome is booming.
But several sources spoken to by Business Class are concerned that the tourism industry will find it difficult to cope with an expected record number of tourists this season because escalating property prices are forcing many hospitality workers to pack up and leave.
It may also be more difficult for tourists to secure a room this year, particularly at the budget end, with caravan parks and backpackers filling with Broome-based workers.
The popular Roebuck Hotel Backpackers is now solely dedicated to housing Broome-based workers.
Now dubbed the ‘Roey rooms’, a four-bed dorm is fetching as much as $700 a week.
The Cable Beach Club, which bought neighbouring Best Western Palms Resort in early 2005 to house its staff, has an additional eight beds at the Roey rooms.
Roebuck Hotel Backpackers manager Bronwyn Hewitt said the backpackers facility was converted into local staff accommodation after its owners struggled to find staff to manage the 46-bed budget accommodation operation.
Instead, the rooms are now permanently filled with staff from the Roebuck Hotel, Cable Beach Club and newly opened resorts The Rendezvous Sanctuary Resort and The Frangipani.
“We get a half a dozen calls a day [from business owners] begging for accommodation, otherwise their staff will leave,” Ms Hewitt said.
She said she recently had a call from a popular restaurant in town whose chef was “homeless”.
“It’s a terrible situation,” Ms Hewitt told Business Class.
“People are paying $850 a week to rent a place or about $300 a week just to rent a room in a house; some places will have 10 people living in them.
“People are leaving in droves, you can tell by the amount of garage sales. When I arrived about two years ago there would be one or two every now and again, now there’s a half a dozen every week.”
Figures from the Real Estate Institute of WA show the median house price in Broome was $580,000 in the three months to December 2006 compared with $340,000 for the same period in 2003, a 71 per cent gain.
Meanwhile, several residents spoken to by Business Class said rents in the town had jumped from an average $550 per week last year to $750 this year, up 37 per cent.
Developing new housing estates in Broome is difficult because much of the surrounding region is under native title.
Broome Shire chief executive Ian Bodill said the shire was working with the state government to develop the Blue Haze light industrial area into a managed workers quarters.
“The hospitality industry is battling, the housing construction industry is struggling, the medical fraternity is battling and even we as a shire are battling to keep people,” Mr Bodill said.
He said Broome’s population was now 15,000, an increase of 10,000 people in the past decade.
The government’s land agency, LandCorp, released stage one of a three-stage Januburu Six Seasons residential development last year. It will eventually accommodate 345 homes.
While some in industry have questioned why LandCorp has staggered the release, Mr Bodill said that, even if all the blocks were released last year, most residents faced a two-year wait to secure a builder.
“The builders can’t get people to come up here to work because they have to pay top dollar and then find the housing for them,” he said.
Broome Chamber of Commerce president Patrick Imbert said the town’s housing problem had hit a crisis point.
Mr Imbert said the chamber wanted any new resort developments to provide for staff accommodation before gaining planning approval.
He said the chamber was also keen to work with the owners of land at 12 Mile and the shire to develop large parcels of land into temporary housing.
Mr Imbert said many businesses were concerned there would not be enough hospitality workers living in Broome to service the needs of the tourists.
