VISITORS IN FREE FALL
OPERATOR SPEAKS OUT
A GOLD Coast tourism operator says the COVID-19 crisis has set him back a decade financially and there’s no relief in sight as border closures drag on.
Gold Coast Skydiving and Gold Coast Adventure Flight’s Archie Jamieson was forced to shut the doors when the pandemic hit.
Mr Jamieson said he had been struggling with “the whole uncertainty of opening again”. About 30 per cent of his business comes from interstate.
“The borders are a concern for everything in the tourism industry. Gold Coast, it’s a bit of a ghost town at the moment,” he said.
“I’m a bit bemused by the whole thing. You can stick 30,000 people into King George Square for a protest, but we’ve still got our borders closed.
“Personally, I think it’s a bit over the top. How flat do you want it (the curve)?”
Adventure Flights resumed on June 1, but business had been slow with the borders closed – and as the city business sector awaits a border reopening date, Mr Jamieson said the “horse has already bolted” in terms of the impact.
“This is when all the grey nomads come up and they’ve lost their season,” he said.
“If they (State Government) open it up at the end of the month, well, people won’t have booked anything because they don’t know yet they can get in there (Queensland).
“We’ve got to get used to the new way of doing things and we can’t stay locked up forever.
“It’s been like we’ve taken a massive step back in time. We have an enormous amount of debt here with our new (Bilinga) premises, the leases on our aircraft vehicles et cetera. While a lot of that is frozen, we’re still accruing interest and that hole is just getting deeper.
“We’ll get a massive bill at the end of six months instead of chipping away at it, but we have nothing to chip away at it with because there’s zero income.”
Nearly 20 staff are employed, but the businesses “will be scaling everything right back”.
Mr Jamieson said they would follow all guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19.