HOSPITALITY HEADACHES
THE headaches are ongoing for the Gold Coast’s once thriving hospitality industry – and most are not being caused by overindulging right now.
Venues, from cafes, eateries, restaurant-bars and nightclubs are doing their best in the most trying of circumstances to constantly adjust, tick all the necessary boxes to meet coronavirus pandemic restrictions and still somehow provide service with a smile.
On the whole, on the Gold Coast at least, venues appear to be doing the right thing. During inspections by Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation officials last weekend, none of the nightspots entered were non-compliant in any major way.
It was not the same story up the M1 at Brisbane’s famed Fortitude Valley entertainment precinct which drew the ire of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk for alleged footage showing that most reckless of activities right now: operating a dance floor.
Fair enough. Rules are rules. As a southern Gold Coast venue has found out – as reported in today’s newspaper – for breaching multiple guidelines including maintaining a customer contacts register.
The surging outbreak in Victoria right now which, has led to a whopping six-week lockdown being imposed on many Melburnians and has the rest of the country nervously watching on serves as a stark reminder why that is important.
But where venues and operators deserve a serious break from this rule-loving Queensland State Government is patron restrictions. The limits which remain on venues despite Ms Palaszczuk apparently relaxing them a week ago are unfair, illogical and unnecessary.
Under the guise of freeing operators from highly restrictive shackles, she lifted a ban on bar service and removed area restrictions within premises. And while it seemed the one patron per four square metres rules were relaxed and cut in half, they were not.
As this newspaper has reported on multiple occasions, much to the frustration of venue owners large and small, premises under 200sq m had the rule cut to one patron per two square metres. The devil was in the fine print where all of a sudden a cap on patrons of 50 at once was included.
Those above 200sq m were still at one patron per four square metres. So outside of enabling patron bar orders and not needing to divvy up their venue into sections any more – except under their COVID safe plan requirements they actually still kind of have to – little has changed. Owners are quietly seething and the charade needs to be called out. The State Government needs to reconsider such unnecessary clamps right now – operators and their patrons in Queensland, but particularly on the Gold Coast, deserve it.