Cairns lockdown: more than 500 businesses at risk of closing without wage support for workers
The tourism industry in Cairns and surrounds estimates 650 local small businesses are at imminent risk of closing without a second round jobkeeperstyle wage support for workers.
Cairns has now been placed in a precautionary three-day Covid lockdown, and tourism business operators say the local shutdown compounds a situation that had already become dire in recent weeks.
Even before the local shutdown, domestic visitor numbers had fallen “off a cliff” when Covid outbreaks grounded holidaymakers from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, after approaching record numbers in May and June.
“My stomach has been doing all sorts of flips,” says Alan Wallish, the operator of Great Barrier Reef tour boat Passions of Paradise.
“[Four] weeks ago I was stressing that I didn’t have enough staff to look after all the people who were coming to Cairns.
“I’d hate to do a stress test on me at the moment. This yo-yo-ing, going backwards and forwards, lockdowns, this has to get sorted out at a national and state level. It can’t be left to us on the ground to deal with this.”
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Mark Olsen says the biggest issue for businesses is a “cash crisis” and that many travellers who had booked to visit were now asking for refunds, rather than postponing their trip.
When minor Covid outbreaks in April and May prevented some travellers from making planned trips to Cairns, four in five simply rescheduled. Olsen says this time around, the same number (80%) have asked for their money back.
“It becomes a crisis of confidence,” Olsen says. “[Travellers] don’t have confidence after this cumulative impact of lockdown after lockdown. You don’t want to leave your money with someone [if you don’t know when] travel restrictions are going to be lifted.”
On top of the costs of refunds, business costs have continued for tourism operators despite them having littleto-no revenue. On Friday last week – before the local lockdown was announced – tours and attractions were operating with just 9% of their usual patrons.
One large reef tour operator – which requires 17 staff in various roles to get a boat out – ran a weekend tour with only five guests. The cumulative losses during lockdown are about $10m a day.
For many business owners – especially those whose operations have previously relied on international travellers – the large volume of winter bookings had prompted a deliberate pivot to capture the domestic market.
Many brought in additional staff from across the country and had spent months training them. Others had spent money to pivot their business models to better cater for the Australian market.
“It was gradually building but has just ground to a halt,” says Nikki Giumelli, who operates the Bad Fishy jet boat.
“There was a lot of expectation we were able to recover from 2020. We invested in our businesses, we anticipated a recovery and we got a few weeks.”
Ben Woodward, the director of sales and marketing for Capta Group, which operates wildlife parks, tours and other attractions, says the business was able to keep about 170 people employed during 2020 due to the federal government’s jobkeeper program.
He says some businesses will now close without similar support.
“There is going to be a need for longer term support for tourism and hospitality operators,” Woodward says.
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“We still don’t have a specific timeframe of when we are going to see international borders open, we’ve got triggers around vaccination percentages but in terms of timeframes we don’t have anything to work with. Considering the situation we’re currently in we’re not able to maximise opportunities.
“The frustrating thing is that through no fault of our own that we’re in this situation. It’s just a reality that we need that support.”
Olsen says because Cairns has not been in an extended lockdown, local businesses and workers were not eligible for Covid disaster support payments, even though their customers had been “locked out”.
He estimates 650 mostly small-tomedium businesses are “on a knifeedge” and may not be able to continue without a jobkeeper-style program or other support.
“This is the worst it has ever been. When we hit our lowest point 12 months ago we still had the support of JobKeeper. We’ve done another 12 months without that support, it’s ben a really challenging time … death by a thousand cuts, no one knockout blow but every single one of them has had an impact.
“It just slowly wears away at your business confidence. The people I’m speaking to they’re very nervous and they’re in a state of disbelief.
“It wasn’t many weeks ago where businesses were up at night working out how they would staff this peak time. They were looking forward to finally putting a bit of money back in the bank account to pay off some of those debts that were accumulating over the last 18 months.
“There’s a great sense of disbelief and there doesn’t seem to be any leadership or light at the end of the tunnel that gives you confidence that you’re going top come out the other side.
“We don’t know if we’re going to have a September/October school holidays, we don’t know when the borders will reopen, we don’t know when Australia will get to 80% vaccination. That inky blackness of what the next few weeks and months looks like. Someone just needs to shine a little light in there.”