Bookings at a peak as tourists flock to Geraldton

If you’ve struggled to get a parking spot in Geraldton, you are not alone. Geraldton was bustling with tourists over the first week of the school holidays, which has been fantastic for Ocean Centre Hotel general manager Natasha Gibson, whose bookings were up 50 per cent from last year. “We’re excited about breaking (booking) records,” she said. Ms Gibson said the school holidays were often a quiet time for the business, as they usually take mostly corporate bookings. “That’s when my staff take their holidays,” she said. But this school holidays, there is a hardly a free room. Ms Gibson said finding staff had been tough this year, an observation in line with many other regional employers. As a result, her existing team members have had to knuckle down to keep things running smoothly, and she said she was “thankful for their effort”. She said a majority of her guests were from Perth, and many had not been up north for decades. “They love it when they get here and see how much Geraldton has changed,” she said. Beeliar man Paul Bursnall spend the first week of the school holidays with his wife and two daughters, holidaying in Geraldton and taking a day trip to Kalbarri. He said Geraldton had always been on their list of places to visit, but they had just never made it up before. Although he said he probably would have come up regardless, he noticed up-north escapes had been a hot topic in Perth lately. “People are talking about up-north trips a lot more than usual,” he said.