LET’S HOPE VISITORS SUPPORT BUSINESSES

CAIRNS stores are preparing for more tourists and customers once the borders reopen. Will the visitors flash their cash in person or keep shopping online while they sit by the pool? Covid has kept many southerners at home to work and play for long periods of time, resulting in them building strong online shopping habits.

It will be interesting to see if they shun their online habits and indulge in physical retail shopping once they’re on holiday.

Far Northerners also love online shopping. Couriers are now a more common sight in suburbs than the humble postie.

And when it comes to groceries, major shopping outlets are investing heavily in click-and-collect and delivery as those options grow increasingly in popularity.

For Laura Dicken, of Trinity Beach, nothing beats the advantages of shopping in a store.

There are the benefits of seeing, touching and feeling. But more importantly, a physical store, if it gets it right, has customer service as its trump card.

Honesty and expertise is the edge for any store that wants to keep its doors open.

Covid, unfortunately, has forced many shop doors to close.

This masthead has reported on most of them.

Encouragingly though, there have been many which have opened too, with owners seizing an opportunity and giving retail a crack.

Opening and maintaining a business is hard work and when the goalposts change, regardless of pandemics, it takes commitment, dedication and hard work to be successful.

It is hoped that once the borders reopen and more people return, they will support all those FNQ businesses who have hung in over these troubling times and those that have sprung up.