Emerging from the wilderness
HOSPITALITY, tourism and leisure businesses in the region are expected to keep relying on the JobKeeper scheme as ongoing uncertainty surrounding Victoria’s fight against COVID-19 undermines their ability to work their way back.
Before Melbourne reentered its tighter lockdown, a surge in domestic tourism and consumer confidence had started to flow through to regional businesses.
However, the coronavirus rollercoaster struck again.
Melbourne’s tighter antivirus lockdowns were last week looking like being extended beyond the initial six week time frame and Geelong’s growing number of active coronavirus cases has raised fears the city could also be dragged back to tougher restrictions.
The federal government’s announcement that it would extend a reformatted JobKeeper scheme to March has provided some relief and reassurance to employers and workers in the most affected industries.
Torquay snow and outdoor wear wholesaler and retailer XTM Performance’s owner, Pete Forras, described JobKeeper 2.0 as a godsend for his business and the more than 20 staff he has on the scheme.
While Mr Forras was confident XTM would emerge strongly from coronavirus, and he would prefer not to be reliant on JobKeeper into next year, XTM Performance had experienced a massive disruption during its peak Australian ski season.
Mr Forras said he was forced to downsize quickly when the government’s indications in March were for businesses to go into hibernation for six months.
“That meant winter orders were being cancelled,” Mr Forras said. “The reality is every business has looked at how to survive this thing and JobKeeper was true to its name and enabled us to keep a whole lot of people in work.”
XTM’s retail store in Torquay was closed for two months but its Geelong warehouse kept operating as it was receiving stock.
XTM also used JobKeeper to keep regular operations in product development going as much as possible.
Then, as restrictions eased, retailers started to place orders.
“We went through a mini boom of everyone saying, `Yep, we’ll take our stock and let’s get ready for the season, even though it’s going to be limited’,” Mr Forras said.
The company has national and international markets, notably in New Zealand, which was “going well” on the back of its domestic tourism, but Mr Forras said Melbourne’s return to stagethree restrictions had been “devastating”.
Although Mt Buller and Mt Baw Baw have stayed open in a welcome sign of hope, other ski fields closed.
Mr Forras said: “It went from that whole sense of we’ve done the hard yards, we’ve locked ourselves up, we’ve done everything we could, we are now climbing our way out of this thing, we’ve got something to really look forward to …
“Businesses were preparing to get themselves back on their feet and open their doors, and then the devastating news of what’s just happened.”
He said the unprecedented and volatile nature of the situation made it difficult to plan with confidence.
“It’s really hard to forecast your way out of this thing,” Mr Forras said.
“No one has lived though it before. We don’t know how long this is going to take and what the effect is.”
A positive has been consumers deciding to buy local and support local brands.
The rollercoaster effect of coronavirus is also being felt at hospitality venues.
Mt Duneed Estate owner and general manager Rebecca Hanegraaf said the current uncertainty made it hard to look too far ahead.
“At the moment, I feel it really is taking it day by day and week by week and things can change,” she said.
“Obviously, no one wants to go back into full lockdown restrictions like we were a while ago.”
The venue has 30 staff, including full-time and longtime casuals, on JobKeeper and given the loss of its major wedding and events markets, it expects to retain staff on JobKeeper 2.0.
Ms Hanegraaf said although the venue was limited to having 20 patrons per space, the winery had made use of multiple spaces and weekend trade had been encouraging until Melbourne went back into lockdown,
“I feel like we have just started to find our feet again and move forward,” she said.
“The plan was to move to 50 people per space in July, but that hasn’t happened, so it’s been quite restricting.”
She said as the business had been eligible for JobKeeper, most of the staff had gone on to the scheme.
“The best thing that JobKeeper has done for us is allowed us to keep staff engaged,” she said. “It keeps them employed, it keeps them engaged with us as a business.
“They are all doing some hours of some sort during this modified trading time.”
Ms Hanegraaf said confirmation that JobKeeper would be extended, albeit in a slightly different format, was reassuring.
She said the business was trying to keep staff engaged so that when restrictions lifted at some point, Mt Duneed Estate would be in a situation of having staff ready to go to meet whatever the new requirements might be.