Nomads Airlie Beach

Wish you could put 0 stars. I am camped in the powered area which is fine and the location is excellent to the main street but the facilities are the most disgusting I have ever seen. I am ashamed to be Australian and see such a run down and filthy place for our international visitors to stay. Would definitely not recommend it at all, the whole place needs a bulldozer.

(This is a review based on my camping experience, I did not stay in the dorms)

My stay at the campsite was probably the worst during my journey.

I’ve had budget stays in Nepal (or even at campsites at large Festivals in Europe) which had better facilities, security and hygiene.

In a nutshell:
- many facilities are not working (in the shared kitchen, shared BBQs)
- the hygiene of the toilets and bathrooms is just terrible. The facilities are old and dirty. The worst is: all the 10 bathrooms DONT EVEN HAVE SOAP TO WASH HANDS. Tell me: what lessons did the management learn from the pandemic?
- the sense of safety on the campsite is below level. Aggressive drunk guests come home from the pub early in the morning and have all the liberty to scream, fight and wake everyone up, without them being intervened by a night guard. Literally anyone can walk on the campsite. At daytime, I’ve seen guests driving about 20/30 km per hour driving ON THE PATH where people walk. Worse: a guy drove his 4WD into a tree next to our site. There’s only 2 people at the reception at a time, plus a few volunteers who help “cleaning”) but they clearly have no clue what it feels like to provide a safe experience. I mean I guess there’s about 100-200 people staying in the dorms + campsites. How on earth can you manage this as a proper hostel/campsite while this is such a chaos?
- Maybe something what the management is rather indirectly responsible for: from all hostels and campsites I stayed at, people were the least socially interested in others. First, because most of the people are hangover from partying (not management’s fault) but there’s no real social common area where people can meet apart from a few couches at the reception and a few picknick tables outside (which are btw gross). The bar area is apparently closed, which is a missed opportunity because it has potential to be a meetup spot.

Overall, we accommodation has great potential (location, natural environment, swimming pools (which look clean btw))..

But in general I think this place has lost it’s credibility to provide backpackers a social, clean and safe base they need.

If you’re looking for a cheap and central campsite to stay at in Airlie Beach.. think again.