Cost of virus to reach $1b by year end
THE Gold Coast has lost 40 per cent of its overseas market since the coronavirus outbreak – and is on course to lose $1 billion by year’s end if the crisis continues.
As sharemarkets took another battering yesterday, the Federal Opposition and boss of Gold Coast Tourism told the Bulletin in separate interviews the real cost of the city’s free fall.
Labor Deputy Leader Richard Marles said he’d heard “pretty confronting” stories from Gold Coast hoteliers, with some reporting occupancy rates had dropped to single digits overnight.
He said the lack of visitors was having an “enormous impact” on a wide range of operators, particularly small-tomedium business operators.
Labor said overall international visitor numbers had dropped 400,000, or 40 per cent of the market.
Speaking in Surfers Paradise yesterday afternoon with Gold Coast-based Senator Murray Watt, Mr Marles said it was one thing to hear statistics and figures about how the Gold Coast’s tourism industry was being impacted, but “another to be present in a place and hear the very difficult stories that people have to tell”.
“This is real, it’s not just statistics, it’s happening to real people and it’s going to play out for some time to come.
This is not just something that’s present for the next week or two,” he said.
Mr Marles and Senator Watt criticised the slowness of the Federal Government to announce a stimulus package and demanded it be “sufficient to the task”.
“It’s simply not good enough to come up with a response to tourism which seeks to raid a response that’s already been put forward for bushfires,” Mr Marles said.
Senator Watt said more than five million international and national visitors travelled to the Gold Coast region last year, spending a collective 26 million nights and more than $5 billion. He said he’d heard “worrying” stories and was particularly concerned about the affects on the Gold Coast’s large contingent of casual workers.
“It’s not just hotel owners, it’s also the little operators, the surf schools, the fishing charters, the cafes that rely on tourists that are really starting to pinch the feel,” he said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is expected to announce a stimulus package as early as
ANNALIESE BATTISTA
today to help the country’s tourism and education sectors most affected by the outbreak. Pensioners and Newstart recipients could be early beneficiaries.
Destination Gold Coast chief executive Annaliese Battista said funding and stimulus from the Federal Government was needed to boost not just the tourism industry but the thousands of small businesses which it relies on.
“Each day small businesses are struggling to make ends meet and at risk of going under and the chances are they may not be able to get back on their feet again,” she said
“Within 12 months the impact of this on the Coast could be about $1 billion and that is being conservative.
“The economic value of tourism to the Coast is $6 billion annually and we are likely to have seen 20 per cent come off that just from the drop in international visitors, which makes up 25 per cent of our overall market.
“A little support (from the Federal Government) will go a long way for the mums and dads out there.”