How is business in Airlie Beach? Interview with Lyn Gregson

John Nayler from Deju.vu Magazine, talks to Lyn Gregson about how the Retail business in Airlie Beach is coping with the lack of visitors to the region.

Lyn has been in the Retail business for 34 years and owns 7 retail outlets across the Whitsundays employing 38 staff. She said there has certainly been many challenges over the past 30 years such as pilot strikes, cyclones, flooding and shark attacks that have kept holidaymakers away,  however she has never experienced anything like this before.

A very passionate Lyn said the communities of the Whitsundays have been crushed financially and have begun to feel the effects of non-travel, as far back as January 2020. She believes that they will be one of the last regions to come out of this. Sixty to seventy percent ( 60-70%) of their business is international travellers and going on what the current state of play is, it could be September 2021 before any real changes come into fruition. Lyn highlights the fact that they need to adjust and find a strategy in order to survive and come out the other end with some form that customers and visitors expect. She believes that this is the biggest challenge that Retail businesses will be facing!

Originally Airlie Beach was built on domestic travel and has been maintaining high intrastate numbers around 400,000 visitors per year plus a quarter of a million (250,000) interstate visitors per year. Traditionally the domestic market has been strong and remained strong, however not now. Missing also is the backpacker trade that brings vibrance and zest to the Airlie Beach community.

The difference between domestic and international visitors is that international traveller produce a higher yield. They have not experienced anything like the Whitsundays before so they soak up every opportunity to undertake more activities and scenic tours plus get involved in the social aspect that the Whitsundays and the Great Barrier Reef are notably renowned for.

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Re-calibrate seems to be the word of 2020. Expect the unexpected and roll with the dice of uncertainty. Lyn says that the only way the Retail businesses will survive is to take on the retail reality of consumer "Need it now", which will become their new emerging market.

She acknowledges and respects the fact that Queenslanders themselves and the Government have done an incredible job of flattening the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic however, now it is time to bring some hope and sanity back into this tight-knit community.

She pleads with the Queensland Premier, Anastasia Palaszczuk to let Queenslanders travel within Queensland. Lyn says, "We have suffered enough and are still recovering from cyclone Debbie, our reserves are exhausted! As a strong community we stand together and will take a considered approach to the next phase of inviting Tourists back to the Whitsundays for a quality experience".

Any coastal Queensland town that is reliant on the Tourism market needs ongoing support from the Queensland Government in order to survive this pandemic. It is time that they looked at each individual Region and make some qualified and informed decisions now and inject funding back into the Tourist market which brings millions every year into the Queensland economy. Time to pay it forward!

Why Wordpress is a waste of time

Frequently at eCentral we find ourselves rescuing business from web sites built in Wordpress that are doing little - if anything - at all for their business. Complaints range from sites being incomplete, hacked, invisible to Google or resulting in NO BUSINESS.

First, a bit of history.

Let's build a blog engine - Wait! we can use it for web sites!
Born of goodwill and the DIY web development crowd, Wordpress has origins as a "blog" web site system making it easy for news and holiday makers to create pages about their life or chosen passion, add some photo and "post" the page for fans to read and follow.

As popularity grew for Wordpress the rabble of developers took the popularity as inspiration and suggested that ANY web site could be created in Wordpress. Sadly the fundamental sequential "BLOG" nature of Wordpress makes it a bad choice for structured web sites.

Wordpress plug-ins explained
To make matters worse, the Wordpress "mob" came up with a "plug-in" strategy to overcome the need for the web site to have function. Things as simple as enquiry forms, shopping carts, newsletter registration, etc require plug-ins.

Forever frenzied backyard developers have been publishing plug-ins quicker than they can think them through and thus the quality is forever dubious. The resulting market place of plug-ins is crowded with varying quality, little documentation, few updates and little, if any, support.

Wordpress site builders then have to wade through this myriad of incomplete and "buggy" plug-ins to find one that is carries out something like the operation required. The mission is to then work out how to install it and then wedge it into the web site in such a way that it looks like it fits, if at all.

Security flawed
Wordpress is now in a cycle of constant updates. Due to its wide popularity, it has become a favoured target for hackers who even build robot processes to seek out and compromise known security flaws.

Count the cost
Despite all these shortcomings hindering Wordpress in the modern day, there is no question that a business can use Wordpress to create a web site and launch it to the world. It sounds like it will cost nothing but along the way the overheads end up including:

- Excess time learning to use Wordpress and overcome its shortcomings as a "Content Management System"
- Sorting through plug-ins to find ones that supply the extra function AND actually work
- Overcoming incompatibilities
- Revisit the content in a systematic way to include SEO content (as to be any use to the business at all)
- Installing security updates frequently
- Keeping the site fresh despite the content system requiring, login, photo add, page add, add photo to page, publish

The cost keeps on counting as the web site fails to perform, impress or sustain any online business for as long as its is allowed to live.

In the end will it do any business at all?? It may be that the DIY process missed the mark from the outset and the site is speaking to the wrong people in the wrong way.

The way to save yourself all this time and sanity
At eCentral we have been working with businesses of all sizes and budget to create beautifully crafted websites which don't just look great, but fully integrate business marketing and online success. Our proven process takes hold of existing sites or creates new ones on time, on budget that weave themselves into marketing strategy, social media, Google and the bottom line.

We are standing by to talk about how the internet and a superior website can work for your business.