Gold Coast: Travellers cancel holidays after border decision

Sydney travellers started cancelling their holidays to the Gold Coast just hours after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s decision to keep the border closed.

SYDNEY travellers started cancelling their holidays to the Gold Coast just hours after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s decision to keep the border closed.

Frustrated Village Roadshow Theme Parks COO Bikash Randhawa tweeted Friday afternoon that “cancellations coming through left right and centre thanks Annastacia MP, merry Christmas to you, this is what you call creating jobs.”

Economic modelling by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Queensland in June revealed the border closure was costing Queensland businesses almost $17 million a day.

Mr Randhawa, who has been outspoken in his opposition to the border closures, told the Bulletin the Village Roadshow call centre was “chaos”.

As a worker and tourism operator, below is garbage, no regard for buisness or the community. Your decision today has destroyed Christmas and beyond. We create jobs not you. #QLDvotes #qldpol @AnnastaciaMP @SkyNews @GCBulletin @keenatGCB https://t.co/fZbLf6LDLD

— Bikash Randhawa (@BikashRandhawa) October 30, 2020

“The phones are going off, people are worried and anxious,” he said.

“People keep asking us what will happen so they can rebook their holidays, but we can’t give any answers.

“The issue is we don’t have any clarity.

“Our team in the call centre have been working away all afternoon, people just want to get together with their family for Christmas. There is no certainty of that now, not even a plan.”

Mr Randhawa said while many Sydneysiders itching to holiday on the Gold Coast had refrained from asking for refunds at this stage, it was evitable if no further government decisions were made.

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The Queensland Premier has announced changes to the border restrictions and says that no more police will be needed to patrol the state's borders with New South Wales. Police at the Griffith St, Coolangatta, border site. Picture: Jerad Williams

Accommodation Association of Australia CEO Dean Long said the continued block for greater Sydney had “completely destroyed” consumer confidence.

“Unfortunately, the government’s decision ... has completely destroyed consumer confidence from anybody looking to travel to Queensland,” he said.

“Nobody is booking long term, or even a month out. As a result, I highly doubt we will see too many cancellations. But that could escalate when we move to next month and into Christmas.

“The impact will be substantial unfortunately.”

Mr Long also added Schoolies was “100 per cent gone”.

Accommodation Association CEO Dean Long

“It’s been an absolute disaster. It’s disappointing but we thought that may happen and it has unfortunately happened.

“Schoolies is 100 per cent lost to the Gold Coast.”

Destination Gold Coast (DGC) chairman Paul Donovan said Ms Palaszczuk’s decision to keep out 4.8M Sydneysiders means DGC would scale back a promotion campaign into NSW.

“We wait, get our hopes up and think it may happen and ‘Oh it didn’t happen’,” he said.

“This has been going on for ages. I don’t want to attack (Ms Palaszczuk) because there is no benefit to that but this decision is reverberating through the Gold Coast and she also didn’t ease any of the other restrictions.”

Destination Gold Coast boss Paul Donovan. Picture: Tertius Pickard

Mr Donovan says opening up to Woolongong and Newcastle but not Sydney “does nothing for us”.

“It will do hardly anything for our airport, hardly anything for accommodation. We need greater Sydney.

“I’m very disappointed. We had huge hopes it would be opened up. It’s not giving anyone any confidence that there is going to be anything happening in future. I’m dumbfounded by the decision.

“And I don’t know how long the people on the Gold Coast can keep taking this lack of decision-making and lack of planning. We actually need to put systems in place to deal with this — we can’t keep hanging out waiting for a decision day to then be told we are not doing it.”