Whitsunday businesses say other forms of support needed alongside Covid-19 grants
Whitsunday business operators have welcomed the announcement of a $600m support package, but say they’ll need more than ‘handouts’ to survive.
Whitsunday
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Whitsunday’s business sector has welcome the announcement of a beefed up Covid-19 support package while at the same time emphasising their struggles were far from over.
Airlie Beach tour operator Jan Claxton responded to the increase to the state’s Covid-19 business support package from $260 million to $600 million saying “any help is gratefully received” but for many businesses, including her own, the outlook was still pretty “dismal”.
Ms Claxton said the usefulness of the grants package would depend on the size of the business and whether operators were able to access actual cash or merely the deferral of payments, which “really don’t help at all” and were “almost worse” for those struggling if they contributed to growing debts that may not be able to be paid off.
She said attention on other issues such as payroll tax might be more helpful, but the main thing the sector needed was to “get back to business as usual” or at least have some idea of when this might happen.
“What we’d really like is to just get back to doing what we do,” Ms Claxton said.
“It’s looking like it’s going to be a really long haul, so we really need to consider how we move forward and how we handle hot spots and border closures and all the shut downs.
“Knowing where we could get to in the next six months would give us something to work towards.”
Bowen Chamber of Commerce Chairman and pub owner Bruce Hedditch supported any move to improve the financial position of the business community, especially small businesses that lacked the cash reserves to “weather the storm”, but agreed with Ms Claxton that its issues would not be solved by handouts.
“All levels of government need to address charges and red tape that affect viability and make things very hard for small businesses already doing it hard,” Mr Hedditch said.
“They continue to charge for incidental items that should be free of charge.
“There’s so many duplications in respect to meeting requirements with inspections and licensing – it becomes very inefficient and very costly.”
Tourism Whitsunday CEO Tash Wheeler said business operators in her sector were calling for the state and federal governments to work together on wage support assistance similar to the JobSaver program offered in New South Wales.
Ms Wheeler said occupancy levels in the Whitsundays had fallen to their lowest since pre July 2020 at 40 per cent, and this was significantly impacting all businesses in the region.
“The last six weeks have had a significant impact on business, a number of island resorts and marine operations have reduced workforce by 60 per cent and many employees have been stood down,” Ms Wheeler said.
“Island Resorts have reported their worst ever month in any year for August.
“Day tours across the Whitsundays have seen capacity drop to below 20 per cent and in some cases, 0 per cent.
“Mainland accommodation has reported cancellations and a drop in business across August to 40 per cent, compared with an average of 70 per cent in 2020.
“The tourism industry and our operators urgently need additional wage support assistance.”
The grants will be open to businesses across Queensland from Monday, August 16.
Full details about the program can be accessed at www.business.qld.gov.au/supportgrants.
Business backs call to restart cruise industry
Whitsunday tourism operators are backing calls to restart the cruise ship industry in the hopes of regaining customers they have been struggling since early last year to survive without.
Airlie Beach tour operators Jan and Peter Claxton lost of thousands forward passenger bookings with their company Ocean Rafting when the worsening Covid-19 pandemic forced the cruise industry into shutdown in March 2020, and say the effect of this, together with international border closures and interstate lockdowns has been “devastating”.
The Claxtons say it is not just their business feeling the flow-on effects of cruise cancellations – with one in three people in Airlie Beach employed in tourism, the impact has been “massive”.
Now, in an attempt to start clawing back some of their bookings, the Claxtons have joined forces with the country’s largest cruise organisation, Carnival Australia, in calling for state and federal governments to agree to a restart plan providing a pathway for the resumption of cruising, beginning with domestic itineraries.
“We would normally devote two of our boats to cruise passengers whenever a ship came to Airlie Beach,” Ms Claxton said.
“In January last year, prior to the pandemic, we had 16 ships in just one month but by April there were 28 cancellations.
“We actually built a boat purely for the cruise ship business, which was growing to such an extent that we fully expected it to soon account for up to 20 per cent of our business,” she said.
Ms Claxton said tourism operators needed to know there was a “recovery” plan in place, as they did not know how long they could stay in “survival mode”.
“If we knew relief would come within six months we would know what we have to do to hang on. But we need a plan and that has not been forthcoming,” she said.
Carnival Australia and P & O Cruises Australia president Sture Myrmell said the Claxtons’ experience was being replicated across Australia for hundreds of businesses that are part of the value chain of cruising.
“Businesses both small and large benefit from economic activity generated by cruising but the flow has now been cut off for more than a year with no indication of when the tap might be turned on again,” Mr Myrmell said.
“This loss of business opportunity for so many underlines why it is so important for federal and state governments to engage and agree on a pathway for the resumption of domestic cruising, knowing that it will be months before any cruise ship can return to Australia.”
The Health Department website says the cruise ship ban imposed in March 2020 has been extended to September, 17 2021 “but this does not mean the ban will be lifted at that time”.
A spokesman for the department said the resumption of cruising would depend on the capacity of state and territory health systems to respond to outbreak events, and the broader epidemiological situation in Australia.
The resumption of cruise operations and other “discretionary” forms of travel would be considered in the context of the international border reopening, and included in the four-phase National Plan announced in July 2021.
“Any relaxation of requirements would be dependent on expert health advice and may be amended or reinstated at any time,” the spokesman said.
International cruising was “not being considered at this stage”.
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