August 7, 2010
Last summer's norovirus crisis brought it to the brink of permanent closure, but Tukurua's Golden Bay Holiday Park is bouncing back. Hopefully. Geoff Collett reports.
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The last time Bob Perriam talked to the Nelson Mail things weren't happy.
For weeks dragging into months, the Golden Bay Holiday Park had been attracting nationwide publicity over a high-season outbreak of norovirus which had laid waste to hundreds of campers' holiday plans. And Mr Perriam, the park's principal owner since 2003, found himself in what he now calls a "whirlpool of blame" - leading him in April to retreat and close the gates indefinitely.
"We worked diligently with all the public health people and the council, and any campers that were upset, and still everyone wanted to lay the blame. That just got really overbearing in the end, " he says now.
The Mail was principal among those he says he got a "snitcher" with, as the paper reported the complaints of some decidedly unhappy campers, along with theories on what might have caused the illness.
But this week, the Central Otago businessman has bounced back and is talking frankly about last summer's nightmare and, more importantly for him, what he hopes will be a "good news story", that the park is going to reopen for camping again this summer - before Labour Weekend, he says.
He says he has been inundated with pleas not to close the place for good, including at a series of meetings he organised with campers to discuss its future.
He fielded concerns from local business owners, who he says have told him that the camp's troubles had affected their trade. Tukurua residents have also contacted the Nelson Mail, expressing their relief that the campground is to re-open, ensuring the continued business it attracts to the Bay, as well as maintaining access for local people to the beach.
Mr Perriam bought the park - and its six-plus hectares of prime beachfront land - along with a minority business partner, Queenstown real estate agent Kelvin Collins, through their company Parks and Camps. The demand for coastal property was surging and they paid more than $2 million.
Many wondered then whether its days as a traditional campground - and one with rather dated facilities and capacity for no more than 450 campers - were numbered.
Mr Perriam says his property investment strategy has always been a medium to long-term one and while it was the land which grabbed his interest, he says the holiday park business was viable enough to cover the costs of holding the property.
He takes a similar approach to various property interests around the South Island; but it's safe to say that none has provided him with the challenge he faced when the campground manager phoned him at home in Central Otago last January to advise that the developing crisis of ill campers at Tukurua was escalating out of control.
Mr Perriam immediately made the 12-hour drive to Golden Bay to help deal with sick campers, those who were booked and yet to arrive, the health authorities and the media.
He maintains that while there was one particularly grim night when diarrhoea and vomiting was rampant, it was not the continual battlefield that was portrayed. Some campers, he says, were unaffected and got on with enjoying their holiday. But he freely acknowledges that he and his managers were out of their depth in some regards.
The media attention was especially challenging, as speculation started that the camp's water supply might have been contaminated, or that campers had got ill by swimming in the Tukurua Stream which was found to have bacterial pollution.
Ultimately, the stress took its toll on his staff. The closure, he said, was in part an attempt to bring things to a head and to deliver a "wake-up call" that the park's owners did not have to keep it open to the public.
While he says it was a real possibility that the closure could have been permanent, the representations of numerous regular campers changed his mind.
Recent weeks since have been spent attending to maintenance, installing hand cleaners and bigger water tanks, and similar. The park's management systems, including cleaning, have been reviewed and audited. While the appearance of the place hasn't much changed, he has tried to expunge the grim memories of last January, when the norovirus rampaged.
For example, he has had a local artist paint a mural on the toilet block. "The toilets were a miserable place for a lot of people last year, so I'm thinking let's make it a fun place this year, " he says with a laugh.
He has also learned the lesson of being unprepared for such a large crisis on his property. He took the advice of the public health authorities - who, he admits, he didn't even know existed 12 months ago - and is producing a detailed plan on how to respond if there is a sickness outbreak again.
Some of that, he admits, is tricky, such as how to write guidelines on acceptable personal hygiene. But his experiences have become sought after in the holiday park industry, as others have realised that they could be as much at risk as the Tukurua camp proved to be.
Nelson's medical officer of health, Ed Kiddle, says that the cause of the norovirus was most likely somebody arriving already infected with the disease and spreading it to other campers. Mr Perriam says that shortly before the outbreak, somebody had left vomit in a kitchen sink - that, he thinks, was the trigger. He knows that the camp's reputation took a hammering and in some minds will continue to be associated with the mass sickness. If anything similar happened there, he says it would be the death knell for the Golden Bay Holiday Park.
Dr Kiddle says the fact there has been one outbreak of norovirus does not make the Tukurua camp vulnerable to others in future - he expects the opposite will be the case, given the measures that have been put in place.
However, Mr Perriam is bothered by pollution in the Tukurua Stream, which flows through the camp. Whether or not it played any part in the sickness, Tasman District Council testing coincidental to the norovirus detected bacterial pollution which made it unsafe for swimming last summer. The source was never detected.
Mr Perriam upset dairy farmers when he blamed dairy effluent further up the catchment, but Tasman District Council investigations have not pointed the finger.
He remains anxious that if the pollution returns this summer and "no swimming" signs go up by the stream, that his camp will again be in the spotlight for the wrong reasons.
In an age when many campgrounds in as blessed a spot as the Tukurua one have long since closed and been turned to more lucrative uses, it might seem that the odds are stacked against Golden Bay Holiday Park, especially when Mr Perriam points out the unfavourable economics of investing in new infrastructure for a place that is only full for four weeks.
Adding to that squeeze is that he has decided to cap camper numbers at 350 from now on, introducing high-season tariffs to try to push demand out into less popular times.
But he has also built two new "five- star" self-contained cabins on the property to see if that can generate more business, and has resource consent for 10 more.
He won't directly answer the question as to how long he is committed to keeping the place open as a campground, other than to point back to his "medium to long-term" approach to investments.
For now, he is focused on the immediate future, and getting the place open again for Labour Weekend. With only temporary caretakers on site, he has been dealing with the many details himself, including responding to the steady stream of inquiries from hopeful holiday-makers planning their next summer's escape - preferably a drama- free one.
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