You can argue about whether Broome needs Uber. You cannot argue about whether the existing transport network is meeting demand. The Broome Chamber survey settled that question. It is not.
Here’s what 77 local businesses reported back.
73% — disrupted by wait times
Nearly three quarters of respondents said long taxi wait times had disrupted their operations or customer experience in the last 12 months.
This isn’t a one-off bad night. This is structural. The Broome taxi fleet is small, the demand profile is highly seasonal (peak tourism season versus the wet), and the operating economics for taxi drivers in a regional town don’t support holding excess capacity. So when demand surges — flight arrivals, evening service in restaurants, sport finals, festival weekends — the system simply runs out.
The verbatims tell the story better than the percentage does.
“We’ve had to purchase vehicles and hire additional staff as we cannot rely on taxis to get our guests to and from the airport.”
— Broome tourism operator, 50+ staff“Booked taxis for airport transfer not turning up. Staff worried they will not be able to get a taxi for an early morning start.”
— Broome health and community services provider
That first quote is the one to sit with. A Broome tourism operator with 50+ staff has bought vehicles and hired drivers because the public transport network can’t deliver. That’s a private workaround for a public-infrastructure failure. Most businesses can’t afford to do that. They just absorb the cost as lost customers and stressed staff.
66% — bookings that don’t arrive
Two thirds of respondents reported taxis simply not turning up after being booked.
This is a different problem to wait times. A long wait you can plan around. A no-show you cannot. It’s especially punishing in the contexts businesses actually need taxis for: early morning airport runs, late-night staff getting home safely, medical appointments, school pickups.
The same 66% reported that they’d had staff or customers unable to get home safely after evening events.
That second part isn’t a rounding error. It’s a safety issue. When transport fails after dark in a town with no alternative, people walk. In Broome’s climate, in Broome’s geography, that’s not always a safe option.
43% — airport overcharging
Forty-three percent heard from customers that private drivers were overcharging — particularly on airport-to-accommodation runs.
This is the part of the problem that doesn’t get talked about as much, because it’s harder to measure. Private cars filling the gap left by the taxi network are operating without metering, without published fare structures, and without the regulatory oversight that licensed taxis have. Some are run by good people doing the right thing. Some are not.
The 43% figure is customer-reported. That means it’s businesses telling us their guests, clients or staff came to them and complained. The actual rate of overcharging is almost certainly higher — most one-off visitors won’t complain to a third party.
What this looks like in practice
Take a hypothetical operator: a Cable Beach resort with 80 rooms.
On a peak Friday in July, they’ll receive roughly 50 guest check-ins arriving on the three afternoon Qantas flights. Of those, maybe 35 will need transport from the airport. The current Broome taxi network can move perhaps 10-12 of those efficiently in the immediate post-flight window. The rest wait, complain at the front desk, or take an unregulated private car at a marked-up rate.
The resort eats the customer experience cost. The town eats the reputation cost. The drivers — the ones doing it properly — eat the abuse.
That’s what 73% disrupted, 66% no-shows, and 43% airport overcharging looks like on the ground.
What the data doesn’t say
Two important caveats.
This survey is not a critique of any individual taxi driver. Most of the drivers we know are operating professionally inside a system that has too few of them. The structural problem is supply, not service quality.
And the survey is a single point in time. We’re committed to re-running it annually so the trend line is measurable — whether things improve, hold, or get worse.
What comes next
Post 03 in this series covers the demand side: what businesses want, what they’d pay for, and what we’re building to actually meet it.
If you’ve experienced transport disruption to your Broome business and you’d like to add it to the next round of data collection, reach out. The more verbatims we have, the harder it is to dismiss the dataset.