The Tourism & Transport Forum has welcomed the federal government’s decision to subsidise 800,000 airfares, but warns that it will not be sufficient to preserve jobs across the broader tourism industry. It has called for a dedicated wage subsidy to come into effect until international travel resumes.
It is a theme echoed by Cairns Adventure Group Director Roderic Rees, who appeared on Sky News yesterday calling for a wage subsidy to lift employee confidence so that businesses can “ride out the quiet times” and hold on to their “key specialised staff”. According to the interview (video below):
- A lot of Cairns operators have highly specialised staff that have left the industry already.
- The airline ticket subsidy will increase the volume of people coming into regional centres like Cairns. However, a lot of businesses have lost staff through a lack of employee confidence. Therefore, they won’t be able to transact the additional tourists.
- The only way to fix the situation is to have some type of wage subsidy to create employee confidence.
- There is no certainty on when we are going to get a recovery and it could be years before business is ‘back to normal’.
- Getting extra people into Cairns is the “solution”.
