Queensland park wins again

The BIG4 Cairns Coconut Holiday Resort in far north Queensland has been named the Best 5 Star Caravan Park in Australia at the 2011 National Accommodation Industry Awards for Excellence.

It's the third year running the resort-style park has won a major award at the Accommodation Association of Australia's national industry awards night.

The latest trophy joins countless others in a display cabinet in the park's reception area, including five Australian Tourism Awards and 13 Queensland Tourism Awards.

Spread over 28 hectares, the immaculately presented park includes a range of accomodation and facilities not normally seen in a caravan park, including seven cabin styles and 195 caravan sites including one with a luxury ensuite with its own jacuzzi and barbeque.

Facilities include a $1 million interactive water slide park, two lagoon pools, tennis and volleyball courts, a large outdoor movie screen, and Australia's largest jumping pillow.

Cairns Coconut Holiday Resort was the first caravan park in the country to provide a jumping pillow, and the first to offer a free pancake breakfast to guests.

Park manager Lloyd Smith was thrilled at the latest award, saying it was as much a reflection of the park's high standards of customer service, as its status as "a holiday resort with all the facilities".

Despite admitting that "this year’s going to be a bit quieter" than usual, partly due to the affects of the recent Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi, Smith said the park remained "very busy" during the recent school holidays period.

"Cairns is hurting, some of the (higher end) hotels are talking about being down 30 per cent," Smith explained. "We’ve just finished our financial year, and last year we were up 22 percent on the previous year. This year we haven’t done the figures yet but we’ll be close to 10 per cent up."

"I used to manage another hotel in town, the biggest resort in town... 82 per cent of our business came from overseas," he said.

"With the high Australian dollar, Australia's (tourism industry is) hurting. The Brits and Americans are going somewhere else because they can't afford to come to Australia. It's too expensive, and that particular business I was in has taken a nosedive.

"This place here is 98 per cent domestic, and whilst a lot of people are deciding to go overseas, because it's so cheap, there's still a lot of Aussies who are camping at home.

"Our market hasn't shrunk, so we're still doing alright."

Smith said that being a part of the BIG4 chain since "Day one", which provided access to BIG4's 170,000 members, had also contributed to the park's success.

"About 55 per cent of our bookings come from repeat customers and word of mouth," he said.