Without actually reading the story, the
Council battles to keep beaches beautiful headline in yesterday's Bully reminded me of these pics taken a few days ago on the beach in front of X Base on Magnetic Island:
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| A thong, beer bottle, glasses and can scattered below the high water mark |
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| Garbage on the beachfront rocks |
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| Building rubble on the beachfront |
Not only are
X Base desecrating a public beach by failing to do a simple task like a daily beach clean-up, and are abusing the only absolute beachfront commercial property on Magnetic Island, by publishing these pictures, hopefully their brand will be permanently damaged by their environmental ignorance and abuse.
Then of course, from a straight business perspective - how stupid is it to have your front door and single greatest commercial asset littered with crap?
You can prove how dumb they are and help ensure that brand
X Base gets it's dues by sharing this post with as many people as possible and by emailing
base Backpackers at
info@stayatbase.com and letting them know how you feel.
I understand that, owners of the
X Base and
base Backpackers brands, the Recreational Tourism Group Pty Ltd, ) is in turn owned by (amongst others) Babcock & Brown and Accor Hotels. Accor is of course one of the biggest hotels chains in the world and also owns the
Four All Seasons on Magnetic Island (and a few in Townsville as well) so maybe an email to them will be helpful too. However, and interestingly, I couldn't find either a corporate or a complains email address for Accor Hotels or the Accor Group so I'll be leaving my comments on their Investor Relations contact form
here.
7 comments:
I would like to take the chance to introduce myself, my name is Aimee Jones I am the General Manager of Base Magnetic Island and have been for the past six months.
I would like to take the chance to reply to this blog. I am both disappointed and upset by the comments made. We take great pride in our location here on Magnetic Island and view the beach as being our greatest asset for visiting backpackers.
Whilst there is clearly some rubbish on the beach, I have my staff walking the beach twice daily to pick up belongings and rubbish left behind by guests, these are completed at 0630am and then again at 1600. Not only do we make sure these walks are completed each day, but most of my staff walk the beach to work and pick up rubbish along the way. I have taken into account the fact that this may not be enough to keep the beach litter free and as of today I have staff completing hourly checks on the beach to ensure no guest has the opportunity to leave any type of litter.
My staff and I take great pride in our property, we like all other residents of Magnetic Island do not want to see litter on our beaches.
We value what we have a great deal and as Mother Nature has shown us during the past few weeks she is one not to be messed with.
As for the so called "building rubble" you claim that we have dumped, this has been placed as a precaution against cyclone season. I am sure you are aware if a King Tide occurs during a cyclone it can be very damaging, these blocks have been placed in front of the deck to ensure the King tide waves are broken up while crashing on the rocks. This will ensure the waves are not as powerful and could potentially stop the outside deck from washing away.
I welcome feedback from all viewers of this blog, I also welcome any feedback in regards to any other matter.
Please feel free to contact me at any stage if you wish to place feedback Aimee.jones@stayatbase.com.
As I mentioned, my staff and I are upset by this blog and want to make it very clear we respect Mother Nature, we respect the environment whilst we may not be meeting everyone's expectations at present we WILL now strive to exceed them.
Kind Regards
Aimee Jones
General Manager
Base Magnetic Island
aimee.jones@stayatbase.com
Hi,
I would like to start by introducing myself my name is Aimee Jones i am the General Manager of Base Magnetic Island and i have been for the past six months.
After reading this blog i felt the need to comment.
My staff and I are extremely hurt and disappointed by comments made in this blog. We love our piece of paradise on Magnetic Island, we value how lucky we are to have it, and we have full understand that the biggest asset to our business and visiting backpackers is the beautiful beach at the front of our property.
In the past and up until today we monitor and remove all litter on the beach twice daily once at 0630 and once at 1600, we have a number of staff who walk to work and also collect rubbish as far as the marina on a daily basis.
From today the staff will be monitoring the beach on a hourly basis and removing all litter left on the beach, i would like to thank you for pointing out that our efforts are at present not good enough, therefore from today that will change.
My staff and I are all residents of Magnetic island, we like all residents understand the importance of keeping Magnetic island beautiful and most of all keeping it litter free especially the stunning beaches we have to offer.
WE also understand the importance of not testing mother nature, the building rubble you refer to is not litter. It has been placed there to assist us keep the outside deck in place if a cyclone was to hit our property during a King tide, the blocks are placed there to break the waves to prevent serious damage.
I am sure after the past few weeks you can understand us taking necessary precautions to protect our property, our guests, my staff and to prevent damaging the environment by losing a large deck into the ocean.
We would never intentionally litter the beach here at Base Magnetic island just we would never to any beach, it is unfortunate that some of our guests do not share our views but with new procedures in place i am sure it will prevent it from happening in the future.
We respect the environment, we respect our beautiful property, we love our beach. I can see that we have not been meeting everyone expectations but i can assure you that from now on we will exceed them.
As you i welcome any feedback or suggestions from the local and greater community.
Please feel free to contact me at any stage.
Thank you for giving me the chance to give feedback.
Aimee Jones
General Manager
Base Magnetic Island
aimee.jones@stayatbase.com
Thanks for the comments Aimee. It's great to hear that you're going to improve the beach cleaning.
A couple of comments:
- The pics were taken at 5:35 pm on Sat. 8 Jan. - about an hour and a half after your regular round and well after the high tide that day.
- Building rubble is litter or certainly would be in my front yard. In terms of business, it is not a good look and in terms of it protecting the decking (a) it will be washed away by the next storm surge just like the (larger) rocks were in the last (b) maybe you shouldn't be built where and how it is?
It is definatley a legitmate concern to make sure all rubbish is picked up off of any beach, especially the beach outside Base( a known turtle nesting site) where just a few weeks ago some of the Base staff assisted baby turtles into the ocean.
Maybe if you have so many opinions, instead of wasting time creating blogs, you could actually walk the few steps from the beach onto the Base proepety and let them know directly they had rubbish on the beach. If the blog hadn't been brought to the general managers attention how could she have made a difference? You would have made an impact much quicker going straight to the source than wasting your time with beaurocratic formalities. It is unfair to complain about something if you have taken no effort to notify the source of that complaint.
sidenote-there is no Four Seasons Hotel on the island (All Seasons), nor did Base build the hostel on the beach. They bought the property from another company long before Accor even came into the picture.
Thanks Rebecca
I fixed the Four Seasons typo. It is the All Seasons band that's on the Island and owned by Accor.
I figure I've got every right to post as I did (it is really more an attack than a complaint)- this mob are profiteering from their location on a beach owned by the public.
If anything, I should have gone straight to the EPA!
As to why do it - I guarantee that blogging it will (and probably already has) deliver much greater change than an old-timer fronting the manager at the bar when she's trying to sign in the next busload of backpackers.
Finally, I remember Sharkworld (pre -X Base) quite well and believe me, the deck wasn't there until the X Base redevelopment
Well done, Aimee Jones, for your well thought-out and constructive reply. Too often I see, so called managers take offence to any criticism, to the extent where people are reluctant to report anything.
Have a great day!
I agree with anonymous, its great to see a pro-active manager, makes you wonder if island view had of taken Rebecca advise if the problem would of ever of been a issue.
I walk the beach along to base on many occasions, whilst there at times can be a few items of rubbish as a general rule the beach outside is clean and tidy.
Maybe we should stear our efforts towards the young locals who seem to think holding fires on the beach and then leaving empty stubbies behind.
Well done Base, keep up the good work.
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