THE owners of Mildura’s All Seasons Holiday Park and houseboat business say they are ready to reopen to travellers and holidaymakers as soon as restrictions ease.
Jodie and Sean Bromley were forced to close their popular tourism business late in March due to the rollout of Victoria’s coronavirus restrictions.
Ms Bromley said the initial shutdown was abrupt and left the park empty, aside from grey nomads and essential workers, with many other guests making a quick return to their homes in SA and WA before borders closed.
The business has taken a proactive approach to its downtime, however, bringing forward winter maintenance works on both the park and its houseboats.
Ms Bromley said the lockdown had been a welcome chance to complete tasks that were difficult to organise, such as creating new roads in the caravan park.
“Even though this is such a negative event economically and for our communities and regions, we’re trying to see the positives, so that when we reopen, we will open better than we were,” she said.
With most of the works now completed, Ms Bromley said the business was keen to reopen once eased restrictions allowed.
“Last week we started focusing on our eventual reopening, so instead of being reactive we thought we would be really super-positive and active and promote this and good things will come,” she said.
Part of the promotion was sending out winter specials to clients in anticipation of restrictions easing, including a 20 per cent discount on houseboat bookings before December 20.
“Grey nomads and families might be able to come through by June, so we’ve been focusing on having things for them to do when they do arrive here,” Ms Bromley said.
“But if we can’t sail by June 6, we will refund your money — guaranteed.”
She said feedback from customers throughout the closure had been overwhelmingly supportive of the business and the Sunraysia region.
“Some of them have been absolutely fantastic, saying they don’t want their money back and instead deferring their holidays to another year,” she said.
“Of course, we have had to organise some refunds, and rightly so, but most people recognise that it’s not our fault or the region’s fault and they want to come back.
“They still love houseboating and they still love Mildura — this is just a hiccup in the road.”
