‘We’re struggling’: Covid surge spoils summer for Australia’s hospitality and tourism businesses
For Phil Johnson, the licensee of Aireys Pub, keeping the hotel open seven days a week at what should be peak season has instead become a “day-byday proposition”.
During summer the hotel’s lawn, which boasts spectacular views of the sea and sunset, is usually packed with holidaymakers who have flocked to the Victorian surf coast town of Aireys Inlet to escape Melbourne’s heat.
But this year the pub’s takings are on target to be down by about 20% over summer due to a combination of staff being unable to work because they fear they have Covid and people staying away because they don’t want to catch it.
The pub is among businesses grappling with a staff shortage crisis gripping hospitality and tourism operations from Victoria to Queensland, as skyrocketing Covid cases caused by the Omicron wave and a shortage of testing keeps workers away from their jobs.
Johnson said the hotel had also struggled to find staff in the run-up to Christmas because two normal sources of labour – backpackers and cooks who come from overseas on skilled migration visas – were unavailable due to the pandemic.
“We have 40, 45 staff over this peak period,” he said.
“At the moment I’ve probably got about 10 with Covid or suspected Covid, which is making life really hard.”
He said workers have been unable to confirm whether they have it because of the long waits for PCR tests at the nearest site, about 30km away in the Geelong suburb of Torquay, and the unavailability of rapid antigen tests.
“A few people have had like one or two, but I was in Geelong this morning, just going through Chemist Warehouse, but I can’t find any,” he said.
“Our kitchen’s good, which is good, so it’s just the front of house that we’re struggling with. It’s just a day-by-day proposition at the moment.”
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Some customers are also staying away, even though Aireys Inlet appears to be as full of people as usual – no short-term rentals are available in the town this week, according to booking website stayz.com.
“We are not as busy as we thought we’d be because a lot of people are being cautious,” Johnson said.
“It seems like a few families down here got it, so they’re staying away. And a lot of the oldies who we’d normally see just aren’t coming because I think they’re obviously, rightly, concerned.”
He said the fall in business so far was “not great, but not the end of the world”.
“If we come to a grinding halt next week, then we’re going to be in a whole lot of pain, but touch wood we’ll just keep going.”
Staff shortages have hit tourism and hospitality operators across Victoria and the country, with reports of restaurants shut in nearby Lorne.
On the other side of the bay, Hotel Sorrento, which services millionaire’s playground the Mornington Peninsula, closed suddenly on New Year’s Eve “due to health & safety reasons”, operators said on social media.
It will reopen from midday on Friday, the hotel said on Tuesday.
Up north, the luxury Intercontinental resort on Hayman Island, in Queensland’s Whitsunday islands, has cancelled tourist bookings because staff are in isolation, while the restaurant industry in holiday hotspot the Gold Coast has reportedly ground to a halt.
Staff shortages have also hit domestic travel, with flight numbers at less than 80% of what was seen in January 2019, before the pandemic hit, according to data compiled by rating agency Fitch.
“It’s very dramatic, staff shortages that are really starting to bite now,” Daniel Gschwind, the chief executive of the Queensland Tourism Industry Council, said.
He said the sector had suffered from a lack of labour even before the pandemic, with cooks, chefs and hotel managers in short supply, although the Queensland industry brought more than 30,000 people back to work last year.
“The reality is we’re still short of what we need now,” he said.
“It is now made worse because with Omicron spreading, which we anticipated, it is taking staff out of jobs.
“That has actually now led a number of operators to operate at reduced hours or just close completely because they haven’t got enough staff.”
He said difficulties getting PCR tests were making the situation worse.
“Getting a test is a challenge and getting the result is a further problem because it’s not as if they arrive in 24 hours any more, it takes days,” he said.
“We wanted the borders to open and we knew we had to take that step but it makes it so much harder.”
He said two years of international
borders being closed had also cut off the flow of working holiday visa holders, international students and skilled visa holders on which the industry had relied.
“People have all kinds of views about that but the reality is that the Australian economy was fuelled by thousands of international workers,” he said.
Karma Lord, the director of the Hospo Voice division of the United Workers Union, said workers wanted to get back but were concerned about being put in potentially unsafe situations.
“Now, with Omicron cases rising around Australia, many hospitality workers are struggling to get back to work because they’re in isolation or sick with Covid-19,” she said.
The industry relied too much on casual workers, Lord said.
“It’s time hospitality jobs were well paid, secure and reliable jobs that workers can count on,” she said.
“It’s terrible that many hospitality venues are having to shut their doors due to rising case numbers and staff shortages, but it’s also terrible that so many workers in hospitality have never had access to paid leave when they’re sick or need to care for loved ones, let alone know how many hours they will work week to week.”