Thousands of Victorian and South Australians holiday at home with government vouchers

After months of restrictions thousands of Victorians and South Australians are snapping up government vouchers.

Andrea and Craig Evans, and their children Jack, 17, and Poppi, 15, of Mildura took a holiday at the Middleton Beach Huts in South Australia. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt.

After months of lockdown and restrictions, Australians are heading on holidays, even if it is only in their own backyard, with thousands of Victorians and South Australians snapping up government vouchers to spend a night and a few hundred dollars away from home.

Victorians have snapped up 110,000 vouchers valued at $200 to stay in to regional Victoria over two rounds. The website crashed because of demand, with the first and second rounds of vouchers gone in 13 minutes.

A third round of 40,000 vouchers will be released in March; vouchers are available only to Victorian residents.

A government spokeswoman said the vouchers would help people who may not have otherwise had the means to travel and allow others to stay longer at locations around the state, backing local economies and workers.

Across the border in South Australia, the October round of nearly 50,000 vouchers was gone in 90 minutes and the tourism commission estimates the scheme has injected $10m into the visitor economy. Unlike the Victorian scheme, the vouchers can be used for CBD accommodation and under the second round interstate residents were eligible.

South Australian Tourism Commission chief executive Rodney Harrex said the Great State Voucher scheme was a “proven tourism stimulus package”, with the latest data released on January 8 showing Adelaide’s hotel occupancy beat pre-COVID levels. “At 75 per cent occupancy, up from 73 per cent the previous year, it shows the Great State Voucher program has achieved exactly what it set out to do,” he said.

“The voucher program is a powerful ‘shot in the arm’ for SA’s tourism sector as it recovers from a year like no other, and charts its rebuild back towards its record $8.1bn visitor economy, employing 40,000 people in 18,000 businesses across the state.” He said people were spending the extra time and money on the hospitality and experiences around them and the program had been opened to the interstate market to leverage the opportunity of easing border restrictions.

The Evans family travels every year from their home in Mildura to the Fleurieu Peninsula and Andrea Evans quickly snapped a voucher up after seeing them promoted on the Beach Huts Middleton Instagram page.

Ms Evans said the money saved would likely still be spent during their holiday and she hoped other states would offer vouchers to promote travelling around Australia, a safe holiday option she said the family was looking forward to.

“We had international travel plans cancelled and refunded. A lot of people we know had their plans cancelled and are now looking at Australian [destinations] we had put off for years.”