Changing The Game with Wilson Casado - Lisa Shreeve

Lisa Shreeve has had the drive and adventuring spirit you would expect from a woman that has lived and worked all over the world, and after many years of wondering she eventually decided to apply these qualities for the benefit of the iconic Busselton Jetty.

I was through her passion and leadership skills that the locals from near Jetty were able to organize themselves to save the town’s most iconic landmark after it was struck by the fury of the Alby Cyclone.

Now, In the midst of a global pandemic, she leads this passionate community through the non-profit “Busselton Jetty Inc”, in its journey of reinvention in order to overcome not only the health crisis, but also an extremely competitive tourism industry.

Tourism And The Virus

Lisa started out by describing her work in Busselton Jetty as “a dream come true”, largely attributing this positive experience to how the local inhabitants stick together as a community to operate and maintain the Jetty.

Unfortunately, as the world shut down in the wake of the current health crisis, one of the industries that was the most directly hit was tourism and Busselton as a town was amongst the most affected by this change.

“We’ve seen the decline in tourism from the international visitors not being able to come”, Lisa would explain, “We had 44% International visitation from Singapore, all of Asia, China and UK are really big money for the Jetty and of course they are not here.”

Since Busselton is a tourism town, this represented a major threat to the livelihood of most of its inhabitants as their plans for the whole year were flipped on their heads, and many had seen their financial security suddenly threatened.

And it gets worse, according to Lisa herself, “We are about two and a half million dollars down since COVID started and compared to where we would be if there was no pandemic and 40% of our staff have resigned or had to be stood down.”

From Crisis, Innovation

The scenario for a tourism town like Busselton in the current global stage could not be more grim, and yet with every crisis comes also the need for innovation, and Lisa has been hard at work to ensure her town answers this call.

According to Lisa, the town began to feel the effects of the pandemic around 2020 of last year when fewer and fewer visitors began to appear, and shortly after the state of pandemic was declared, so was a 55-day lockdown.

The very first thing the Jetty’s staff decided to do was coordinate, to sit together and say: “what can we do?”.

Together, the Jetty team formulated a strategy based on new needs from the community that were beginning to arise with the lockdown, and they made plans for the creation of new and alternative activities that they could do while things didn’t come back to normal.

In about two weeks, they had developed fourteen different virtual tours, their marine science team started an educational workshop for those that were doing homeschool, and they promoted several physicals on the Jetty like running, home workouts and dancing.

Another amazing idea that arose out of this meeting were the filmed Jetty tours, including history tours recorded on the train with the driver explaining the Jetty’s history, which raked in 50 thousand views from around the world.

Their activities were not only focused on keeping the Jetty working as a tourism business either, and the staff unde Lisa’s direction also helped in the delivery of medicine to the retired population of Busselton, planting trees and even walking people’s dogs and much more.

When unexpected hardship struck her little piece of the world, Lisa and her team were able to think fast and make the most out of what was for all intents and purposes a hard time for all the world, but also for themselves on a completely different level.

Regional Development

Now, I’ve been living in Western Australia for about thirteen years now, (a comparatively short time if one accounts to my age.), and something very particular to this region is how beyond the state capital of Perth there are not many large cities and towns.

This can represent a series of inequalities when it comes to access to services and infrastructure, so I had to ask Lisa what her view on this issue were, given her background on regional development.

“A lot of people do think they can only have a career in the city” she thoughtfully replied “ and that is untrue, especially now with the internet and the knowledge of being able to move out of city areas.”

Beyond technological advancement, she also mentioned that “it would be great if certain government departments would decentralize the parliament, which might help with some of those career aspirations too.”

Despite this social challenge, Lisa expressed optimism for regional areas as their situation has been steadily improving to the point where the day when this is no longer an issue is not that far.

Conclusion

If one particular virtue shines the brightest in my interview with Lisa Sheeve, it would have to be her ability to adapt in the face of great change, a virtue that has been the make or break factor for most businesses around the world during these troubled times we live in.

It was though this ability that she and her crew at the Busselton Jetty were able to avoid disaster time and time again, not just for the tourism attraction, but for the whole town in which it stands.

So, if you are on your journey to change the game and facing hard times yourself, there are some questions I want you to make: What can I do to flip this situation on it’s head? What resources are at my disposal, and to what needs can I provide in the pandemic?