Further down the coast, the financial pain is also being felt by seaside communities like Apollo Bay.
"I just pray that it doesn't sort of go on for too much longer and we welcome back the Chinese visitors," Apollo Bay Bakery owner Sally Cannon said.China makes up 25 per cent of the tourism dollar nationally, but in Victoria that jumps to 39 per cent, with $3.4 billion coming from Chinese visitors. "We have a lot of operators focus predominantly on the Chinese market, getting 50 to 60 per cent of their business from the Chinese market," The VTIC boss said.Tourism councils across Australia have written to the Federal Government calling for urgent financial relief, similar to the recent bushfire-response package.The VTIC is also warning of the knock-on effect to employment and the economy.
"It will take six to 12 months for people to really get back on their feet but some of them are likely not going to make it," Ms Mariani said.
Tourism mustn't be LNP Donors? COAL Industry is and doesn't it show?
VstGreatOceanRoad businesses plus sovereignhill made megabucks for years from TheChineseGovt tourists, so if suddenly have cashflow problems, amazing. Need to diversify. Concentrate more on Philippines UnitedStates + others. ScottMorrisonMP looks after our health first.
Do what's best for the population. Humans are more important.
Not that bad, criticizing china and making money on her at the same time is even sicker
Might hurt short term, but better than risking people's life with the virus.
Oh no! We'd much prefer to risk disease than lose out financially.
Hands up who likes piles of Chinese tourists swarming your favourite holiday haunts... thought so.
That is no good then - we can’t just rely on chinese tourists to pump money into the state forever! Good wake up call for businesss to diversify!
Yep - stuff the virus 🦠 and spread infections because all mighty dollar 💵 got preference. Or maybe because we don’t other economy but tourists and real estate 🏡
Two weeks without the buses and businesses are going under? They must be in a precarious financial position. I was just down in Lorne last weekend and it was as busy as ever.
This shows that people are selfish enough to care about money more that the overall health and safety of anyone other than themselves.
What would we rather? A hit on incomes, or communities devastated by Coronavirus outbreaks, not to mention the tragic consequences?
This is a good thing. Learn to diversify a bit, my goodness this country has it too good.
I think rapidly spreading Coronavirus throughout the state putting residents into quarantine thus then not being able to work probably would have greater consequences?
Fantastic.
Foreign dependence
Good, we should transition back to an economy that doesn't involve importing hundreds of thousands of people each year.