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IN THE FIRST INSTALMENT IN A SPECIAL SERIES EXPLORING THE REGION’S STALLING VISITOR ECONOMY, FINDS ONE OF OUR MOST CELEBRATED ATTRACTIONS IS FACING A GRIM FUTURE
TOUGH decisions must be made soon if some of the region’s hardesthit tourism and event businesses are going to be able to contribute to the recovery from the economic devastation of COVID-19.
After 26 years of operating the Blues Train, Hugo Armstrong is set to resort to crowd-funding to pay the business’s ongoing costs and help it shelter into the new year.
Mr Armstrong is appealing for the federal government to identify businesses, such as his, for which social distancing undermines the business model, and support those businesses until there is a coronavirus vaccine or the virus is suppressed.
In mid-March, revenue at the Bellarine Peninsula drawcard, and his Geelong music events programming business, Bay City Events, fell off the coronavirus cliff.
“All of our bookings got cancelled; all our shows got cancelled; 100 per cent of everything went overnight,” Mr Armstrong said.
While he has had staff on JobKeeper, received a $10,000 State Government grant and trimmed costs, the business continues to chew through $10,500 a month.
Until Victoria’s coronavirus crisis deepened and Melbourne returned to tougher lockdown restrictions, he had plans to stage some events for his Geelong clients under the previously flagged easing of restrictions to allow 50 people to a room.
But Mr Armstrong said pivoting further into a different business model was not an option.
“The events industry and the live music industry, they are social gathering industries,” he said.
“We were the very first to go, the hardest hit and will be the last to come back.”
While grateful for the support of JobKeeper, he said it would not protect businesses like his that had lost 100 per cent of revenue, and going further into debt in such uncertain times did not make sense.
He said while government leaders were concerned about creating “zombie businesses”, those not viable when the revamped JobKeeper 2.0 comes to an end in March, he did not believe he had a zombie business.
“I had a business model where we were looking to cut back, remodel and restart,” he said.