Why they call it the blues: tourism loses $1.7bn

Thousands of ticketholders and a who’s who of popular music have been left in the lurch by the 11th-hour cancellation of Byron Bay’s Bluesfest.

Thousands of ticketholders and a who’s who of Australian popular music have been left in the lurch by the 11th-hour cancellation of Byron Bay’s showpiece Bluesfest festival for fear it would become a COVID super-spreading event and compound the cost of locking down Brisbane.

The NSW government lowered the boom as the 16,000-plus concertgoers who had booked for an Easter long weekend of live music and partying began to flood into the northern NSW resort town on the eve of the festival.

New figures exclusive to The Australian show that the tourism industry stands to lose $1.7bn as two-thirds of Australians declared they would not travel over the Easter weekend, and the shutdown of Greater Brisbane triggered mass booking cancellations.

This amounts to a daily loss of $302m, according to industry group the Tourism and Transport Forum. Shuttering the Queensland capital would cost the economy at least $100m each day, Commonwealth Bank economist Gareth Aird said.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s professed optimism about lifting the stay-at-home order for three million people on Thursday was in sharp contrast to the axing of Bluesfest for the second year running, after a Byron Bay man tested positive to the virus. He had been near a hen’s party involving a contagious Brisbane nurse and her sister last Friday.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk professed optimism about lifting the stay-at-home order for three million people. Picture: Dan Peled

The spread of the outbreak into NSW came as a second nurse exposed to COVID patients at Brisbane’s 1050-bed Princess Alex­andra Hospital was infected, taking to 15 the number of locally acquired cases in Queensland.

This breaks down into two clusters, both sourced to containment breaches at the hospital.

Ms Palaszczuk is banking on new case numbers to continue to fall from eight on Tuesday to two on Wednesday, and will make a call at 9am on Thursday, local time, on whether the lockdown can end in time for Easter.

The annual exodus of holidaymakers to the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and camping spots such as Fraser Island would, however, go ahead, delivering a shot in the arm to the state’s beleaguered tourism industry.

Describing the trend in cases as encouraging, Ms Palaszczuk said: “Finger’s crossed we’ll be looking good for Easter. If we see good testing rates and no unlinked community transmission, it is all looking good.”

NSW Health said a “cautious approach to keep everyone safe” led to the scrapping of Bluesfest, which was to have featured an all-Australian lineup including Jimmy Barnes, The Teskey Brothers, Pete Murray, Kate Ceberano and Kasey Chambers.

Ticket holders pack up and leave after Bluesfest was cancelled on Wednesday. Picture: Scott Powick

Blues singer-songwriter Ash Grunwald, due to play on Thursday and Friday with his band and on Monday with Josh Teskey, stared out over a sea of empty chairs at the festival site. He had “definitely, 100 per cent” wanted Bluesfest to go ahead but would now “deal with that as it comes”.

“It’s been an absolutely massive part of my career, maybe even the biggest festival for me,” he said. “It did make my career in large part, getting to play my style of music to a massive audience.”

After signing a public health order closing down the event, NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said: “While the cancellation of Bluesfest is disappointing for music lovers and the local community, I hope that ticket holders will support Bluesfest and hold on to their tickets as I understand Bluesfest will be working on a new date as soon as possible.”

The festival’s organisers said they were “heartbroken” the virus had hit Byron Bay when so much work had been done to pull the event together. COVID restrictions had already limited audiences to 16,500 a day over the five-day program, which was half the normal capacity.

The TTF figures spotlight the cost to tourism of uncertainty over ad hoc border closures and snap lockdowns, with spending set to be down from the usual $3.85bn over the Easter week to just $2.1bn.

Singer Ash Grunwald in Byron Bay. Picture: Jeff Dawson

The accommodation sector revealed booking cancellations over the 10-day Easter period were already worth $40m across Queensland, and $9m in Brisbane alone, as Victorians had been quick to pull out of travelling and NSW residents also kept clear of the Sunshine State.

With JobKeeper finished and the federal government refusing to commit to a more targeted wage subsidy for the tourism industry, TTF chief executive Margy Osmond said the only measures that could save businesses was a faster vaccine rollout and the states adopting a unified response to new outbreaks.

“For leisure travellers who might have been travelling over the Easter long weekend or school holidays, the questions they’re asking themselves is not just about the virus and ‘will I have to quarantine when I go into a particular place’, but also ‘will where I’ve been on holidays affect my normal business once I’m home’,” Ms Osmond said.

“This is going to put the industry’s recovery back by months.”

Research conducted for the TTF by strategy group MI Associates shows that even before the coronavirus eruption in Brisbane, 63 per cent of people were not intending to travel over Easter.

Of the 1010 respondents, just 19 per cent said they planned to travel interstate.

Additional reporting: Patrick Commins,
Andrew McMillen