On the tourist strip of Cavill Avenue, people spill out of bars in the early afternoon. Footpaths are jostling with all sorts: groups of teenagers straggling back from the beach, families walking to lunch.
About 150 metres from Cavill, in the heart of Surfers Paradise, a couple of backpackers eat their lunch in an otherwise empty laneway.
Carla Viera runs the Orchid Vegetarian cafe, tucked away from the main strip. The period should be one of her busiest of the year – the temperature is still 27C and perfect for the beach. In Queensland, schools have been in recess since the Easter long weekend. And then there’s the Commonwealth Games, an event predicted to tip $323m directly into the local economy from Games tourists.
“This is the most honest I can be,” Viera says between pulling coffees and grilling lunch for her two customers.
“Last week, there was one day, from 6.30am to 10pm, when I closed there was $150 in the till. There was just nobody in the streets. So that’s how bad it was.”
“I had all these staff that I hired and I had to let go. I feel bad for them, but it’s a survival thing. I still have to pay rent.
“I’m OK here, I’m stocked up with coconut water and dry lentils, things that don’t go bad, but I really feel for the other businesses.”
The same story is being echoed up and down the coast. A nearby shop that leases moped scooters, a favourite pastime of visitors to the glitter strip for decades, reports about half the number of customers than usual.
Uber and cab drivers say their trade is well below normal. Prabh Jit Sings says it has been very quiet. Another cabbie, John, says he can barely find a fare from Surfer’s Paradise.
“It’s OK traffic from the airport, but that’s it. No one is paying to go on public transport, so who needs a cab otherwise?”
A lot of the anger seems to stem from an impression that Commonwealth Games organisers convinced some people to stay away. Locals and businesses had been sternly warned about the potential for traffic chaos and massive crowds during the Games fortnight.
Almost a year ago, non-tourism businesses in the vicinity of Games venues were briefed about gridlock and urged to keep nonessential staff at home. Many decided to shut their doors and send staff on holidays, along with a large contingent of Gold Coast locals who opted to leave town.
The Games chairman, Peter Beattie, told reporters this week that the M1 motorway, the main link between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, was “a bit of a dog, so the last thing we wanted was people on it”. For most of this Games, with fewer commuters on the roads and others scared away, the M1 has been a smooth run.
Event spectators were encouraged to use public transport, including the city’s $1bn light rail network, which will be the Games’ most significant legacy infrastructure project. There have been few problems or delays getting to and from events. The Queensland tourism minister, Kate Jones, says the patronage figures for Games public transport will on Friday hit 2 million.
“There were reports in the paper for months and months and months saying it was going to be chaos,” Jones said.
Jones says visitor numbers are tracking towards 680,000, better than the 600,000 expected. She also said there would be long-term benefits to the coast from the exposure and infrastructure.
“There’s no doubt that Easter weekend was slower than normal and I think that was because of people choosing to come later and stay at home over Easter,” Jones said.
“Major hotel chains are reporting an increase of occupancy compared to this time of year.
“There definitely seems to be a picking up, particularly when the athletics started. A lot of Gold Coasters who didn’t want to be a part of the Games thought it would be so busy they might have been better to get out.”
Jones said some hotels had been “price gouging” in the hope of a payday that never came. Those that set reasonable prices sold out. She said those concerns about hotel prices and traffic problems might have initially discouraged people, but that 80,000 tickets to events had been sold since the opening ceremony.
The director of corporate affairs at Gold Coast Tourism, Dean Gould, said “some operators are feeling very buoyed by the Games spin-off and others feeling like they might have missed out”.
“The sentiment among retailers and restaurateurs is picking up in direction proportion to the crowds on the streets around their premises,” Gould said.
“The Games has been a resounding success from the point of view of attracting visitors, selling tickets, filling stadiums and showcasing the destination to the world. We expect that positive exposure to support the destination marketing message for years.”
A Griffith University report estimated that the federal and Queensland government spent a combined $1.78bn putting on the Games, with about $1.25bn in additional economic activity generated from the private sector.
Of that, tourists who attended the Games were expected to generate $323m. But business owners say those figures clearly don’t reflect the reality on the ground.
Kader Hammadi is the manager of the On Fire, a cafe in Broadbeach, which has been probably the most active of any of the coast’s main hubs. Hammadi’s cafe is 50 metres from a Games “festival” site, with live music, entertainment and big screens for events.
“This is the worst Easter we’ve ever had,” Hammadi said. “All we’re waiting for now is for the Games to be done and finished and we go back to normal. We’re down about 50 to 60%.”
“Even when they say there’s extra people in town, I don’t know where they are. They’re not in Currumbin, they’re not in Surfers, they’re not in Main Beach. And they’re not here in Broadbeach.”
“There’s no one here. This time of year I’m [usually] running around with three staff on the floor, two in the kitchen. Today I’ve got one chef and it’s only myself on the floor. I did [put extra staff on] and very quickly I had to lose them. I’m struggling to give work to our regular staff that work for us.
“The toughest thing they did was saying to everyone, advertising don’t come to town, put your cars away. There is no traffic.
“All our regulars are gone. They made our regulars think it was going to be crazy, they’re gone for two weeks, three weeks minimum. All the buildings that put their rent up like crazy, now they’re all dropping the price.”
At the start of the Commonwealth Games. hotel occupancy rates on the Gold Coast were typical for the time of year, about 71%. As people become aware that the coast is not overcrowded or off-limits, those occupancy rates have spiked to 81%.
Most businesses say this week, while still slower than expected, is at least better than last.
