Many Australian tourism operators are preparing to reopen over the next week, despite Melbourne’s coronavirus outbreak sending the city into lockdown and forcing states to close their borders to Victorian travellers. Queensland reopened its borders on Friday to all states except Victoria. The holiday reservation website Wotif has seen not only consistent interest in travel bookings since the NSW-Victoria border closure but a “huge spike in interest for Queensland”, according to its managing director, Daniel Finch. The Queensland Tourism Industry Council’s chief executive, Daniel Gschwind, said the border reopening came as a relief to the state’s $26bn tourism industry, which had been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic. “Last time when the borders closed we called around 200 guests, and 96% of them rescheduled their bookings,” Grant said.

Source: The Guardian July 10, 2020 01:18 UTC