Holiday Park powering ahead

Beach frontage, power, water, Wi-Fi, sealed internal roads and dog-friendly.

Sounds like an expensive real estate advert, right? Well, it’s actually the Coolum Beach Holiday Park!

Division 9 Councillor Stephen Robinson said the council-run facility had undergone a $570,000 upgrade to provide a more pleasant experience for guests.

“The Coolum Beach Holiday Park averages around 20,000 caravaners and campers per year from all over Australia and provides guests with direct access to the patrolled surf, making it one of the Sunshine Coast’s most popular camping and caravan destinations,” Cr Robinson said.

“These important works have taken the park to a new level. They include installation of power, water and sullage points for grey water, drainage improvements and construction and sealing of the park’s internal roads.

“This enables the park to better cater for today’s larger campervans and motorhomes in all weather conditions.

“Coolum is one of two council-owned, dog-friendly family holiday parks on the Sunshine Coast. Bringing along your pet on holidays is now very popular and guests can contact the park in advance and apply to have their dog accompany them during their stay.”

As part of the project, 70 small sites in premium location closest to the beach which average 64sq m were converted to 46 larger sites averaging 100 sq m each. The park now has 218 powered tourist caravan and camping sites and six villas.

Manager Greg Howard said the upgrades had greatly improved the park’s functionality and comfort for guests.

“We’re already situated in one of the most beautiful locations anywhere in Australia and we now offer the best possible caravan and camping facilities for our guests,” he said.

These upgrades were funded from the Sunshine Coast family holiday parks’ capital budget and are in addition to the new amenity building that replaced the old block in 2012.

FAST FACTS:

• More than 10,000,000 site nights were spent in Queensland’s caravanning and camping sector in the year ending March 2014

• 90% of all site nights are in regional Australia

• Queensland had the highest percentage of registered campervans in 2013 at 23.8% of all registered campervans

• Queensland accounted for approximately 34% of the gross increase in registrations across Australia between 2012 and 2013

• The total number of registered RVs in Queensland reached 131,586 in 2013, up from 122,494 the previous year

• There were 528,869 RVs registered in 2013. Of these registered vehicles 474,783 are towed product (i.e. caravans, camper trailers, tent trailers, and other towed RVs) while 54,103 are motorised (i.e. motorhome or campervan)

Source:  Caravan Industry Association of Australia