Cairns income support: Thousands of tourism jobs about to die
A stink of desperation is setting in as the Far North tourism industry prepares to lose thousands more jobs unless drastic government support measures are introduced.
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A STINK of desperation is setting in as the Far North tourism industry prepares to lose thousands more jobs unless drastic government support measures are introduced.
It will be a meagre Christmas for operators this year with workers struggling to survive the economic equivalent of wartime rations running out.
JobKeeper is long gone, southern lockdowns have shattered the region’s most important source markets and the beleaguered rib cages of a skeleton workforce are more pronounced than ever.
New research from the Tourism and Transport Forum shows another 3150 jobs will be lost by the time Santa Claus makes his rounds unless emergency support measures are quickly introduced – a loss that will slash the industry’s workforce to half its pre-pandemic size.
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The numbers tell a devastating story.
Before the pandemic, the region’s tourism industry employed 15,750 full and part-time staff and, with indirect tourism spend, supported 25,500 jobs.
By July this year, 3600 permanent staff were out of jobs – and now thousands more are facing the same emaciated death.
The outlook is grim from any angle, especially given NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s decision on Friday to extend Sydney’s lockdown until at least the end of September.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive officer Mark Olsen said something had to give.
“The region grew its tourism workforce ready for a busy winter, but now more than 200 new recruits who have been in training for months are being told to find other work and try to hold on.
“Government needs to understand how significant this impact will be on our community where one in five jobs have depended on tourism.”
Mr Olsen said Tropical North Queensland is, and will remain, one of the most Covid-affected regions in Australia regardless of its relatively low infection rates.
“Without customers, businesses do not have the turnover to keep their highly skilled staff, some of whom have received years of training in specialised areas to become the skippers, dive masters and jump masters that provide the region’s signature tourism experiences,” he said.
“Our region has had just 27 days straight without the impacts of a lockdown in key domestic markets in the past 18 months.
“That period in May was the busiest the Cairns and Great Barrier Reef region had been since before the pandemic as we are the most Googled regional destination for Australian holiday-makers.
“However, the stop-start impact of southern lockdowns shutting the destination out of key markets is difficult for businesses to manage, particularly with staffing levels.”
Mr Olsen had more dire numbers up his sleeve.
“We are in our sixth week of freefalling visitors with more than 15 million Australians in lockdown,” he said.
“Most businesses are running at less than 5 per cent of their normal revenues, and the forward bookings are slowing with hotels down to 15-25 per cent occupancy and more than more than $20m in postponed events for July and August
“We have boats going out with just six passengers and four crew and most venues are on limited trading hours, while others have gone into hibernation.
“Consumers have lost confidence in booking travel interstate and far from home, with nearly 60 per cent of Australian travellers unlikely to cross their state border, according to new data from the Queensland Tourism Industry Council.
“With half of our domestic travel coming from interstate before lockdown, the closing of borders will continue to have a dramatic impact on our region.”
School holidays are looming and TTNQ still intends to launch marketing campaigns in September and October – but their success hinges on people having the confidence to make bookings that, as history shows, are quite likely to collapse at the last minute.
“Data from the retail travel agencies show that Cairns remains the fifth most searched and sixth most booked travel destination over the past four weeks, but we are running at less than 25 per cent of the searches and 55 per cent of bookings from where we were pre-Covid,” Mr Olsen said.
Veteran operator Michael Trout has already been forced to pull the pin on his 31-year tourism business, Blazing Saddles.
He said if a significant support package had been announced weeks ago, there was a chance he could have held on to his family business and the jobs it would one day bring back to the Cairns community.
“It could have been a game-changer,” he said.
“But it still has to happen.
“That’s the only way to save those other good companies – people who won’t be able to pay their mortgages or rent. It’s going to get ugly.”
TTNQ chairman Ken Chapman said income support needed to be extended into the Far North.
“Employees who are stood down and lost hours of work due to lockdowns in their area are able to get up to $750 per week of Covid disaster income support payments from Centrelink,” he said.
“But tourism employees who are stood down because lockdowns elsewhere in the country are causing their employer businesses to be locked out from their customer base cannot receive income support.
“This is a human tragedy due entirely to government policy.”
Originally published as Cairns income support: Thousands of tourism jobs about to die
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