HANGING OUT FOR THE BORDERS TO OPEN UP

LOCAL businesses in Hobart say they are feeling the impact of the drop off in foot traffic that came from cruise ship passengers.

The Beauty and the Bees store is located in the heart of Salamanca and retail manager Lani Budiman said they were mostly reliant on the tourist trade.

“There’s no international tourists, no cruise ship passengers, before they made up to 50 per cent of our trade,” she said.

Ms Budiman said despite being able to expand the business in other areas there had been a drop in revenue. “Luckily the locals have stepped up and supported us, but we were still down by about 40 per cent,” she said. “The online orders have also increased, luckily we export to the US and the US market is expanding.” Coral Expeditions run smaller cruises across Australia including in Tasmania. It shut down for six months last year, but has been able to continue operating with a reduced passenger capacity after establishing a medical plan that included requiring passengers to return a negative Covid test before being able to board. Coral Expeditions commercial director Jeff Gillies said they were grateful to be able to continue to offer cruises, but they had also been significantly affected. “In a typical year we would carry close to 10,000 passengers, this year we have got about 4200 away,” he said.