Letter 253
An industry that weathers a long winter will cautiously look to the months – or years – ahead.
Australian Letters is a weekly newsletter from our Australia office. Registration to get it by email.
The cruise ships are back! More than two years after they were first expelled from Australian waters, the first giant ocean liner more than 850 feet in length drifted into Sydney Harbour on Monday. It has a giant blue sign, worn on its nose: “We’re home.”
Late last year, after Australia reopened its long-closed borders, a small number of tourists began to find their way down, first from Singapore and New Zealand, and then from everywhere else. As of this month, there are an average of 675 international flights to Australia each week, according to data from Cirium. That number is forecast to rise to nearly 1,000 by June.
Compared to the devastation at Australia’s airports for most of the past two years, that’s a dizzying number of flights – although still less than half what it was in 2019, when there were around 2,000 international flights to Australia. per week, bringing the total number of visitors to 9.4 million for the year.
Bringing back international tourists will be hard work. Although the federal government recently announced that it will invest A$147 million, or about $108 million, to support tourism, it’s a small potato for a lost industry nearly AU$80 billion, or $59 billion, spent on visitors in 2020 alone, according to Deloitte.
Add to that the rising costs of everything, including China’s airline tickets and extremely restrictive border policies, and some analysts have forecast a recovery could take years. It’s a similar story, if not more, in New Zealand, which has yet to open its doors to tourists from anywhere other than Australia.
Margy Osmond, executive director of the Travel and Transport Forum, said: “I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to pre-Covid levels. Australian Financial Review this early year. “Every market in the world is chasing shy international travelers,” she added.
There is another knocking effect. Australia grants “working holiday” visas to young people from around the world who are also classified as tourists. Brief idea: You spend a year or so working, maybe as a bartender or behind the bar, then take whatever you save up to see a little more of the land country. Australia’s hospitality industry depends a lot on these young people for a variety of customer-oriented roles, especially in rural or remote areas.
So far, not enough of them have returned. In Melbourne, where I live, Some restaurants are closing stores because they simply cannot find enough hotel staff. SPQR Cucina, a pizzeria in the tree-lined suburb of Mont Albert, this week announced on Instagram that it will be closing now: “Due to the current shortage of hotel service staff, We are simply unable to operate at the moment and plan to reopen mid-year. “
And for some tour operators, a two-year winter has force a new approach that could outlast the pandemic altogether.
Early last year, I interviewed Nadine Toe Toe, a native New Zealander who runs a family-owned motel in the village of Murupara, New Zealand. Before the pandemic, about 98% of the company’s customers were from abroad, she told me. But to meet the immediate needs of the domestic tourism market, they had no choice but to completely pivot.
“Before Covid, our culture was always at the forefront – that we could stand there proudly and tell the world who we are, where we came from, why it was so important. are Maori,” she said. “We are no longer an experiential cultural tourism. We are now a lakeside place. ”
Now for this week’s stories.
Australia and New Zealand
Do you like the dispatches of our Australia office?
Let us know what you think about NYTAustralia@nytimes.com.
Liked this email?
Forward it to your friends (they can use a little fresh perspective, right?) and let them know they can subscribe this.
