Plea to tourists: forget your worries and come aboard

Gold Coast tourism operators Taryn and Mike Sims have one message for hopeful holiday-makers who have planned trips in Queensland over Easter: please come.

Gold Coast Gondolas owners Taryn and Mike Sims and daughter Taylah 9, at the end of a long day at Marina Mirage on the Gold Coast. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Gold Coast tourism operators Taryn and Mike Sims have one message for hopeful holiday-makers who had planned trips in Queensland over Easter: please come.

While they have staved off mass cancellations for now, they are hoping their full-booked long-weekend of gondola tours of the Glitter Strip will go ahead despite the Monday announcement of Brisbane’s snap three-day lockdown.

Ms Sims vividly remembers January’s weekend-long shutdown, which forced day-trippers to cancel their boat rides with her business.

She’s more confident this time, and hopeful the busy Easter weekend bookings will go ahead as planned following Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s surprise move.

Several of Ms Sims’s reservations are visitors from Sydney and Melbourne, and their plans could yet be ruined by cancelled flights or government intervention.

“We’ve had no impact yet,” Ms Sims said. “We are pretty much fully booked for Saturday and have quite a few bookings for Friday. We are not sure what will happen. We have a few customers coming from Sydney and Melbourne and are expecting a few cancellations but not as bad as last time.”

The sentiment is one held by many operators across the state’s tourism-reliant cities, including the Sunshine Coast, the Whitsundays and Cairns.

Many in these regions have struggled through a year of lockdowns and border closures and had been banking on a bumper Easter long weekend, and the associated school holidays, to tide them over ahead of the traditionally quieter winter season.

To add to the financial pain, the federal government’s business support package, JobKeeper, ended on Sunday.

Hotels and caravan parks on the Gold and Sunshine coasts are reporting Brisbane residents — now forced to stay at home — are cancelling bookings for the next few days, but the general rule is cautious optimism.

Brisbane is still open as a transit point to the rest of the state, meaning interstate visitors can fly into the capital and drive or catch a connecting flight direct to their destination outside Greater Brisbane.

But the fear is interstate travellers will err on the side of caution — and heed the warnings from premiers such as NSW’s Gladys Berejiklian — and stay home.