Locals declare ‘Business as Usual’ via Social Media
Douglas declares it's open for business on social media
Monday April 14, 2014
By Sam Cullen
Port Douglas and Douglas have over the years been associated with long term affects from monsoon rains and cyclones. As a fact the region rarely suffers for longer than 24 hours, particularly Port Douglas.
The holiday coastal peninsula sits at the base of a range where water quickly drains away through 3 main rivers systems into the Coral Sea.
Often larger low lying areas in the south and west such as Cairns can suffer long term flooding but in all the years locals can never remember a time when Port Douglas has flooded for longer than a few hours after the rain stopped.
It would take constant heavy rain for our region to be flooded for longer periods said long time local Katie Hughes. The flooding you see in any of the pictures comes and goes in hours.
This seems to be the big issue for Port Douglas and Douglas residents when they continue to watch national news reels showing images of flooding for days on end from weather events such as Ita. This all impacts on peoples travel decisions.
Recently a Douglas Economic Report was produced by Douglas Regional Development indicating the region was 85-90 per cent dependent on Tourism.
With this reliance, every day that visitors are not in the region due to cancellations or delayed travel bookings over school holidays the cost to the regions local economy is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seven days or longer the region is losing millions.
With small business making up over 80 per cent of the economy this has a direct impact on the community. And with national media over dramatizing the news reports there is no defence.
So locals have turned to social media to portray the real picture. By publishing a series photos they can show just how fast Port Douglas gets back to business. ‘Business as usual’ is the catch cry trying to suppress the sensationalism established by national reporting over the last few days. With the Cyclone continuing down the coast it makes it easy for the national news to continue to refer to it and the apparent damage its creating.
Social Media expert Nikki Kanzlemar from Socialeyes Media believes using Facebook to dilute the national news services broad-brush approach is very effective. These days people are connected to their travel destinations via their Facebook accounts and they have come to expect and rely on getting more up to date and accurate information this way.
Jess Coleman from TNQ Marketing also believes that the group sharing of information via various Social Media platforms is the best way to ensure our friends down south and overseas know that the region is open for business as usual. It's been inspiring to see all the locals rally behind the town, presenting a positive, united front and sending those good vibes south.
A key strategy for regions who do suffer natural weather events around the world is to synchronise their business communities online output. That is to ensure that their websites and Facebook pages are all delivering a synchronised message. In Port Douglas alone their is over 500 websites and Facebook page being searched every day by over 5,000 visitors.
Its a very powerful message and dilutes the National News headlines when every landing page for a search in a particular region has the latest local coverage of a weather event.
Newsport.com.au covered the Tropical Cyclone Ita over the weekend and serviced over 25,400 search enquiries and received 3,500 page views to its Port Douglas Webcam and continues to do so. We encourage businesses to request RSS feeds or similarly link the Newsport Daily site from their own updated text on their site.
It was suggested to the Bligh Government after Cyclone Yasi in 2011 that in the North we require more far more defined regions of reference as there is in the South. Reports saying that North Queensland is suffering from flooding just isn’t good enough anymore. The Southern states have far more defined regions and the news uses these to report natural disasters. It is not reported on the news that southern bush fires consume the whole of Victoria or NSW.
We do really appreciate it when the reporters or anchor expresses some real qualities. It was welcomed when James Tobin from Sunrise, on one of his crosses, made it quite clear that although the region was undergoing heavy rain and flooding that with the downgraded category 1, Port Douglas would bounce back in a day or so and be ready to please as it does 12 months of the year.
Well we understand why the national media reports like it does I mean I just saw the movie, ‘Anchorman 2,’ last night and as far as documentaries go I think it was great!
