17 Apr 2026
Words John Miller Informer

MAKE ROOM FOR GEN TIKTOK

For the past couple of years, couple Alex Mengual, 29, and Mark Matula, 30, have been documenting their experiences as young moteliers on social media. First on Instagram, then on TikTok.

Their followers have been given glimpses into the couple’s day-to-day running of their motel in Nanango, Queensland — the 15-key Copper Country Motor Inn — all delivered with the unbridled enthusiasm and good humour of main presenter, Alex.

“At the start, I just thought it would be fun,” says Alex. “People post renovation content all the time, so I thought it would be a bit of fun to document our journey renovating a motel. I was surprised to find no one else had done it before!”

Fifty thousand followers later, the couple’s social media has developed into an interactive forum where Alex asks her audience for input into design and decor choices for the couple’s extensive motel renovations.

“People love helping make choices,” says Alex. “I want to know, ‘If you were staying at our motel, what would you want?’ I know what I would want, but I’m only one person. So, I want that answer from the masses.”

“When I asked for help to pick a design for my compendium, I had 146 comments … people gave me their preferences or told me why they preferred this over that. Their collective feedback helped me make an informed choice.”

Originally from Sydney, Alex and Mark got their start in the motel industry in 2022 through a chance conversation with the owners of a motel in Moruya on NSW’s far south coast. At the time, Alex, was juggling several jobs with events coordination being her mainstay. She was also working parttime at a coffee shop, and driving down the coast from Sydney every weekend to shop her wares at local markets.

Mark, a muso at heart, also had several jobs: landscaping, carpentry and sound recording for the music industry (he now combines his skills to make bespoke guitars for select clients). The Moruya motel owners were scrambling for somebody to run it for them. When Alex casually floated the idea of her and Mark doing it, the owners grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

“We’d been wanting to move out of Sydney for about a year before this,” says Mark. “Our biggest issue was housing and getting a job. This motel was both housing and a job, plus the perks of having a place where you didn’t have to pay rent, electricity and all that. It just sounded good. It was a lot of work, but it was our own work.”

“Running a motel is hard work, for sure,” adds Alex. “It’s 24/7. I know I make it look fun on social media … and it definitely is fun … but it’s a lot of work too. The trade-off is that all the hard work you put in is for yourself. You get to see the reward at the end.”

After two successful years in Moruya, the couple were sold on the motel game and looking to go out on their own. They had amassed a healthy nest egg thanks to free living that saw the bulk of their pay cheque go into their own pocket. They found Copper Country Motor Inn on ResortBrokers’ website and bought the leasehold through our Queensland agent David Faiers in 2024.

Business has been remarkable. Due to the couple’s hard work they’ve achieved between 90 and 100% occupancy, mainly from tradies, travelling businessmen and truck drivers. They have also revived the motel’s 60-seat restaurant, which the previous operators closed in 2019, with most bookings coming from town locals.

Says Alex, “For two years, people were like, ‘When are you reopening the restaurant?’ We needed to find the right people who were committed, and now have two amazing chefs."

For these TikTokers, making the jump to self-employed moteliers is all about timing. Opportunities are to be seized upon.

“First, you have to put yourself out there to try to get opportunities,” says Alex. “Then, when the opportunity comes, even if it’s not the ideal time, you’ve got to take it. We got offered our first motel the week before our wedding and the owner wanted us to start pretty much immediately. It was definitely not ideal! We wanted to travel, to go on a honeymoon. But you just have to seize the opportunity when it comes, even if it’s uncomfortable.”

“So, we got married, went home the next day, packed up our entire home and drove down to Moruya.”

“It was a big life decision, and it wasn’t six months away,” adds Mark. “It was now. For five years before this, we were working our arses off. Both of us had been working seven days a week for years. We wanted to start a family, but we couldn’t see ourselves doing it in Sydney. Working seven days a week wasn’t going to work for us. So when the opportunity came up, we were like, ‘We’ve been talking about this forever, let’s do it.’ The hardest thing is taking the jump into it, not actually doing it.”

“It’s a big scary thing at the beginning,” says Alex. “You just need to get over that initial hurdle. It’s not like running a motel is a job that’s out of reach for most people … you don’t have to study for a degree to do it …. it’s hard work but it’s not a particularly hard job. If we can do it, others can too.”

Since establishing themselves in Nanango, Alex and Mark have started a family and now have two kids in tow — the youngest still at home, the eldest in day care. The couple, who have been an item since they were teenagers, appreciate the flexibility running a motel gives them.

“If we’d gone down the normal path then our kids would have gone into daycare nine-to-five from the age of three or six months,” says Alex. “We’d both have to work a fulltime job. But with a motel, we love being able to have everyone at home most of the time.”

“I love that we’re together all day,” adds Mark. “There’s a lot of tag teaming with our kids and a lot to juggle, but I can stop work at 3 o’clock to pick up our kid in daycare. I wouldn’t be able to do that with a fulltime job working for
someone else.”

As for social media, the couple’s top post has over 800,000 views, but Alex says it’s more about sharing their journey rather than generating business for the motel.

“I think the era of TikTok now is people don’t want to be sold on things,” she says. “People just want to see other people’s lives, it’s just fun. You see accounts of other businesses that are just showing their rooms and basically saying, ‘Book with us.’ But people connect with people on a journey. If you want to engage your audience, you need to be a bit more vulnerable, you need to show yourself, you need to show your journey, not just the product. People like rooting for the little guy, people like getting behind small businesses.” END