Stop-start border closures leave tourism on its knees

Tourism operators are struggling through the toughest time yet in the Covid crisis with visitor numbers reduced to a trickle.

The empty car park of Warner Brothers Movie World on the Gold Coast. Picture: AAP

Tourism operators are facing the most desperate time of the Covid crisis to date with lockdowns and border closures reducing visitors to new lows, triggering urgent calls for help.

Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief Daniel Gschwind said it was definitely the worst time of the pandemic for operators who had seen bookings evaporate in recent weeks, leaving them with no income and little hope.

Throughout the state, losses were mounting, with the Gold Coast missing out on an estimated $250m in visitor expenditure in July, the Sunshine Coast losing $45m a week, the Whitsundays $20m, and Tropical North Queensland $8.6m a day.

“It’s not just suddenly a crisis. It’s a crisis after 18 months of crises,” Mr Gschwind said. “Most businesses have zero forward bookings and for the first time I’m genuinely concerned we will have significant numbers of business failures.”

Those outside of lockdown areas were in an even worse state because they were not eligible for the commonwealth Covid-19 disaster payment.

Mr Gschwind said he had written to the Prime Minister requesting the disaster payment be extended to employees of tourism and hospitality businesses outside of lockdown areas, in the same way the allowance had been made available to airline workers.

“Tourism relies on the movement of people to function,” he wrote. “We currently have no access to international visitors; most interstate traffic is disrupted and current lockdowns in major population centres effectively even prevent intrastate travel.”

After preparing for what looked to be a promising season with record domestic bookings, operators in Cairns and Tropical North Queensland were now struggling to stay afloat.

Tourism Tropical North Queensland chairman Ken Chapman said visitor numbers were down 75 per cent on pre-Covid periods. “We are not locked down in Tropical North Queensland but we are locked out of tourism by the lockdowns and border closures right around the country and it is simply devastating for the industry,” Mr Chapman said.

TTNQ CEO Mark Olsen said the difference between last year and this was the JobKeeper allowance, which helped businesses retain skilled staff.

What made it worse was there was no end in sight, with travel confidence shattered by the latest snap restrictions.

“We’ve got businesses losing $5000 a day on average. How many businesses can lose that much a day before you go into hibernation or opt out?” Mr Olsen said. “There’s no light on the horizon. We’ve heard some good news around increased vaccination rates but it’s a long way to December from here.”

Port Douglas operator Andrea Cameron invested in a larger bus for her regional food tours when business was going “gangbusters” early in the year.

Now it was gathering dust in a garage as bookings dried up.

“There’s literally nobody left. It’s horrendous how the tap just got turned off,” she said.