Testing time for Queensland tourism and travellers
CHRISTMAS chaos has descended on Queensland with thousands of travellers forced to cancel festive holidays in the wake of a Covid testing debacle in southern states.
Queensland’s requirement that visitors return a negative Covid test up to 72 hours before arrival has forced thousands of people to shelve their Sunshine State holiday plans at the last minute due to delays in test results.
Heartbroken travellers have been turned around at airport departure lounges or forced to book new flights at their own expense as the rise of
the Omicron strain places extraordinary pressure on the health systems in southern states, while Queensland testing centres are also being overwhelmed by visitors forced to obtain a negative result after arrival.
While the decision to slash quarantine times for “close contacts” of confirmed cases from 14 days to one week was praised by tourism leaders, the testing debacle has already been a Christmas catastrophe for regional Queensland tourism destinations reliant on long-distance travellers.
In the past week, Cairns has lost about 10 per cent of Christmas holiday bookings, with the number growing each day.
Tropical Tourism North Queensland chief executive Mark Olsen conceded the outlook for the region was “fairly sombre” until Easter.
“There’s been a lot of cancellations in the last week, so it is not the start to the summer that we were hoping for,” Mr Olsen said.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty and it presents a big challenge.”
He said delays over test results was one of a number of problems causing cancellations, with fear over being forced into quarantine and staff shortages also to blame. The Gold and Sunshine coasts have been less impacted as many bookings are from within the drive market.
Queensland Tourism Industry Council chief executive Daniel Gschwind said the testing drama was another unfortunate factor deterring interstate visitors.
“People need the confidence to be able to travel and with the uncertainty over testing results, you just deter people from even embarking” Mr Gschwind said.
In Sydney, testing clinic websites crashed and phone calls were also terminated due to “unprecedented volumes”, with callers redirected to an email address.
Lara Kilborn said her daughter Ella Gould went to a Sydney testing clinic in Caringbah on Sunday morning but she was not able to get a test herself at the Heathcote clinic until Monday due to the “extreme heat”.
Ms Kilborn, who was meant to relocate to Queensland in August, said her daughter’s wait for results had exceeded 60 hours by Tuesday afternoon.
“My daughter and I are meant to fly out of Sydney at 7am on Wednesday and spend Christmas in Queensland – I was excited to finally be able to show my daughter my new house and even booked in for Christmas lunch at the local but I don’t think that’s going to be possible anymore,” she said.
Ms Kilborn said the requirement for a 72-hour turnaround was too tight and Queensland Health was unable to offer her a solution when she contacted them.