Dream holiday destination Queensland has a new nightmare. The flood waters have receded, the cyclone’s fury is long spent — the welcome mat is out again. However, tourists are staying away in droves.
“We saw all the floods and thought we might be in danger,” said Ben Davis, 21, who is in Australia on a year-long work and holiday visa with his girlfriend, Danielle Hodgson.
The English couple planned a short jaunt to Sydney before heading to the tropical paradise of Australia’s northeast coast. However, one week has turned into six — and counting — as they watched first one, then a second natural disaster unfold in Queensland state and decided Sydney was a safer bet.
The sudden change of plans is a small example of a bigger problem for Queensland as it recovers from weeks of deadly flooding and from a massive cyclone.
The disasters have caused an abrupt image malfunction for the state, which includes some of the main drawcards in Australia’s US$40 billion a year tourism industry. Almost 6 million tourists visited Australia last year, and more than half of them went to Queensland, lured by the Great Barrier Reef, thousands of kilometers of pristine beaches and year-round warm weather.
“The vast majority of the tourism businesses in the state have been completely untouched by the disasters. The problem is the phone has stopped ringing,” said Anthony Hayes, the head of the government-funded promotional body Tourism Queensland.
Itinerary changes and trip cancelations have cut Queensland tourism revenue by an estimated US$500 million since Christmas, said Daniel Gschwind, CEO of the Queensland Tourism Industry Council.
Losses are still being assessed, but Gschwind expects that number to rise.
Tourism contributes US$9.2 billion to the Queensland economy annually and provides more than 220,000 jobs.
Tourism officials say it is too early to say whether images of the disasters have affected the number of international visitors traveling to Australia. Industry workers and tourists themselves say many that are already in the country are avoiding Queensland.
Davis and Hodgson bought bus passes and planned to travel the popular east coast route through Queensland, stopping in Brisbane, Byron Bay and the Whitsunday Islands before looking for casual farm work in the fruit-growing region near Cairns. An extended stay in Sydney, Australia’s most expensive city, almost ruined their entire trip when they had to shell out money for accommodation they hadn’t planned for.
“We actually came really close to having no money, so we would have had to go home,” Davis said. “I’ve only found a job just in time. Otherwise I was going to ring my dad and say ‘Can you sort us a flight out home?’”
Davis, who is staying at a hostel in Sydney, said he knew others in a similar position, staying in Sydney or Melbourne, while waiting for damaged areas to clear up and get back to normal.
While many tourism businesses were able to reopen quickly after the floods and storm, damage to roads was deterring travelers, with fewer caravans and busloads of backpackers making their way along the coast, Gschwind said.
Hayes said initial reports reflected up to an 80 percent drop in booking rates in some places in Queensland compared with last year, and that small businesses with limited cash flow were suffering most and had started cutting back on staff.
Other destinations, such as Sydney, have benefited from Queensland’s problems.
“Since about mid-December we’ve been literally full every night and at capacity,” said Robert Smith, owner of the Jackaroo Hostel in Sydney’s King’s Cross, a nightclub and backpacker district that is humming with activity. “It’s been good for us, but it’s been bad for Queensland.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in