After a tough couple of years, the Sunday brunch and morning coffee runs are back in full swing.
But it is hard not to notice the signs reading "staff wanted" on restaurant and cafe windows.
Business owners are trying to attract employees from interstate and overseas, but are faced with a tight labour market in an even tighter rental market, doing business has become even tougher.
One north Queensland company has resorted to buying its own 19-room motel to house staff.
Adrian Connors is the operations manager of his family business that runs a bakery, pie shop and restaurant in Mackay.
He said they had no choice but to take matters into their own hands.
"[Workers] can't find accommodation for short term or even longer term which is affordable for them ... so we went down the line of purchasing a motel in town," he said.
Kevin Collins, who owns a restaurant and catering business in the Whitsundays, has also had to find a way to house his staff.
"We do own a little bit of accommodation," he said.
"Being able to offer accommodation is a significant issue, especially for people coming from out of the region that want to move here.
"Rental accommodation shortages are a problem everywhere, particularly in tourism towns."
The housing crisis
Rental vacancies across the country remain at an all-time low, which is pricing some workers out of the market.
The Real Estate Institute of Queensland's Residential Vacancy Report for the June quarter showed barely any movement across the state.
In Mackay, the vacancy rate was 0.5 per cent and in the Whitsundays, it was 0.8 per cent.
REIQ chief executive Antonia Mercorella said creative solutions were needed to breathe life back into flatlining vacancy rates.
"Queenslanders have been enduring these wafer-thin vacancy rates for some time now and these conditions are understandably having both social and economic ramifications," Ms Mercorella said.
For Mr Connors, his motel offered a solution as he welcomed a new team member from Indonesia.
He said without long-term job or housing references, finding a rental property would have been near impossible.
"It seems to be taking somewhere between three to six months for them to find some accommodation," he said.
"We've had to go out to think a bit more creatively and find a way to help house them, until they can find adequate accommodation."
In the Whitsundays, Kevin Collins was desperate for apprentices who were willing to move to the region long term.
"The front-of-house staff, the wait staff, the bar staff that are largely made up of the backpacker fraternity, they are just staying in hostels, they're here for three months, they're having a good time," he said.
"That part has eased significantly.
"What the whole industry is looking for is people that want to make a career in tourism and that requires long-term accommodation."
A cry for help
This week's national jobs and skills summit in Canberra is an attempt to solve widespread worker shortages.
Tourism marketing specialist Tash Wheeler said the situation in Australia was dire.
"We are struggling with housing and finding places for our working staff to live and you know, they're not the highest earning staff but they work," she said.
"We're at a record unemployment rate right across the country as far as it goes in averages so it's absolute extremes at the moment."
Mr Connors hoped the talkfest would lead to easier pathways to source workers from overseas.
"Number one: allow people into the country to fill the gaps to get started and attract people to regional areas," he said.
"Number two: work out a long-term plan and the long-term vision as to how we are going to attract people into an industry which has so much potential."
Kevin Collins wanted hiring apprentices to become easier.
"There's just a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to go through," he said.
"Where we have jobs that traditionally young Australians don't want to fill in the long term, then allow the short-term holiday-maker market to fill that.
"It's not just about jobs and tourism, it's about livability in general."
