Travel industry joining forces over borders
Tourism bosses are going to unprecedented measures to save their industry. See the hot holiday deals they’ve got on offer.
National
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Travel companies are coming together in an unprecedented alliance to help save the industry, with the reopening of state borders a primary goal.
Mr Turner is one of the main instigators of the new alliance of tourism industry heavyweights, along with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and Sydney Airport boss Geoff Culbert.
“It’s quite a difficult thing to get everyone aligned but across the whole industry, and that’s travel organisations like ours, all the major airports, the major airlines, the tourist bodies … everyone is very keen to have the domestic borders open,” Mr Turner said.
Qantas Group spokesperson Andrew McGinnes said the company had been seeing an immediate spike in traffic once any state bored was opened.
“Our searches on qantas.com are almost back to pre-COVID levels and that’s despite the fact Western Australian and Queensland still have ongoing restrictions in place,” he said.
“People can expect lots of low fares from Qantas and Jetstar as borders restrictions are wound back and we put more of our aircraft back in the sky.”
A Sydney Airport spokesperson said organisations across the sector had been in talks since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak about how they could support one another.
“Naturally, we would like to see state borders open by Christmas and travel to safe international markets in 2021,” the spokesperson said.
On Friday Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the National Cabinet had agreed all states except Western Australia would be open by Christmas, but Flight Centre CEO Graham Turner told News Corp Australia every week the borders weren’t open was “another week closer to bankruptcy” for thousands of tourism industry operators.
Despite Western Australia’s continuing exceptionalism, Mr Turner said Queensland had been “the most recalcitrant” of the states when it came to borders.
“With Queensland we don’t know; they only make a decision [on borders] once a month, and making a decision once a month is really impractical, almost incompetent,” he said.
“This is something urgent. A lot of people’s livelihoods depends on it. Decisions should be made at the right time, not on the third Monday of each month.”
Queensland accounts for almost one quarter (24 per cent) of total tourism industry GDP, and 217,000 Queenslanders are employed in the sector – just over nine per cent of the Sunshine State’s total workforce.
Encouraging news of COVID-19 vaccines this week ignited hopes that the government might re-set its expectations around opening international borders, but Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham stressed such decisions would continue to be based on health advice.
“International travel should remain restricted for as long as is necessary but for no longer than is necessary,” Senator Birmingham said.
“We welcome the news that various vaccines are showing promising signs and, should clinical trials continue to be successful, this could be a game changer in the fight against COVID-19,” he said. “We will work closely with health experts on how the rollout of a vaccine or vaccines will facilitate and expedite the reopening of international travel. Factors such as the speed of rollout, rate of uptake and effectiveness of the vaccine will impact how quickly and to where borders can reopen.”
Australia was continuing to work on a two-way COVID-safe corridor with New Zealand, and this could be a model for how we eventually re-open to other low-risk countries, Senator Birmingham said.
“Regrettably, in other parts of the world, we are still seeing very high case numbers of COVID-19 and therefore will be more reliant on a vaccine or other breakthroughs to be able to facilitate greater opening up of our international borders with these parts of the world,” he said.
The announcement of new vaccines had also prompted some speculation that this could lead a relaxation in quarantine regulations, but Mr Morrison confirmed yesterday there would be no change.
Suggestions the quarantine regime could be waived were “not an option that either the Commonwealth or, indeed, the Premiers and Chief Ministers are prepared to contemplate,” Mr Morrison said.
Mr Turner said even with a vaccine, the reality was that Australia would be forced to live with COVID-19 for at least the next six to eight months.
“The state governments just have to accept that there will always be some risk of getting more outbreaks. We’re not going to eradicate it, and there’s no strategy at the state level to eradicate it, so it’s how we live it and how we suppress it,” he said.
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Escape to the Great Barrier Reef with a four-night package staying at Fitzroy Island Resort, now priced from $445 a person, twin share. Price includes return launch transfers, breakfast daily, a two-course dinner, sparkling wine on arrival, WI-FI and more. Book by December 1, 2020 and travel in select periods until December 12, 2021.
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OVERNIGHT RATES
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Originally published as Travel industry joining forces over borders
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