About Us

NEED TO KNOW WHERE TO GO?

HOW TO GET THERE?

WHAT TO SEE?

WHEN TO GO?

There's so many questions when planning a trip. But finding the answers you want couldn't be easier - you ask the people that know what's what. The people that know the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and every conceivable place in between. That thick tourist guide you're walking around with? Dump it. It can't help you. The 'tourism' website that reads like a corporate law textbook? CTRL + ALT + Delete it. You need local knowledge.

Just Ask A Local is by the people, for the people. There's just one goal here, and that's to give you the best damn holiday of your life, no matter which of Australia's beautiful cities you're in. Many of our members don't just talk to the local community - they are the local community. They walk the streets, surf the beaches and run the businesses. They've lived and breathed their city for decades, and as a result they give you information you won't find anywhere else, for the best price on the market - free.

At Just Ask A Local we don't let a good story get in the way of the truth... we'll give you the 411 on places you just gotta see.... and we'll also tell you where to avoid like the bloody plague and why. Best of all, we don't talk at you, we talk with you - if there's a burning question you need answered just shoot it our way and we'll get the answers sorted for you. And we'll have fun doing it! We'll put the faces to places for you (the hard part), so all you have to do is roll up and relax. Or rock out. Whatever floats your boat (the easy part!).

You've just made the best possible start to a trip you'll never forget my fine feathered friend - go on, get involved. And keep coming back, there's loads of different places we can help you out with. And if there's anything you want to do, anything you need to know, remember - Just Ask A Local.

Melissa Burrows

Just ask a local.com.au is the brainchild of multi-lingual entrepreneur, tourism ambassador and company CEO Melissa Burrows, born and bred locally on the Gold Coast, Australia's premier tourist and visitor destination.

Melissa Burrows, recognised nationally for more than a decade throughout the entertainment, music, film, sports, not for profit and construction industries, has cultivated a large network of diverse contacts and organisations throughout Australia and the Asia Pacific region.

Her multi-lingual skills have proved an asset, including Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, French and Italian coupled to gaining her Masters Degree in Hospitality management at Angers, France, and subsequently her Bachelor of Business at Griffith University on the Gold Coast.

Melissa was appointed the first woman in the Salvation Army's history to chair its Young Professionals Board in Queensland. She held the position as Business Development Officer for the local chapter of the highly respected Abused Child Trust and recently was named by elders of the city as an Ambassador of the Gold Coast, a role the relied on her integrity and enterprise in promoting the values of the Gold Coast city - her birthplace.

Melissa created this website as a demand-led response to countless questions she has encountered over many years from visitors and new resident arrivals to Australia's sixth largest city and without doubt its most inspiring and diverse lifestyle city.

Just ask a local.com.au was developed with a passion for helping visitors hungry for the right advice in a city where they don't know their way around, and for Gold Coast enterprises - a wonderful opportunity to beat the socks off advertising directories by taking their business directly to the customer.

Explaining why she created Just ask a local.com.au, Melissa says that as she watched countless numbers of tourists roaming around 'her town' she realised the were not savouring the same deeper experience she knew - as a local - was possible.

"Tourists and visitors were having a superficial experience about the Gold Coast that did not break the code of our city," says Melissa. "They did not understand the culture and movements of our exciting region and its people. They were having a commercial experience, which gave them dry, typical largely uninformed and marketed experience.

"What they needed was 'a local experience' to truly understand how wonderful my home - the Gold Coast is beyond the frontline of its unbeatable climate, beaches, resort themed shopping and world class theme parks."

The destination you are now at is the culmination of long term planning by Melissa to satisfy the quest for local knowledge by just asking a local on this website!