The difficulty in booking a spot on the Spirit of Tasmania is said to be frightening off visitors… and calls are now growing for the ferries to be making more crossings of the Bass Strait.
Labor leader Dean Winter has said the Government and TT-Line need to add more sailings to increase demand.
“We can and should be doubling day sailings in Tasmania to add more capacity, this is a capacity problem,” he told the Mercury newspaper. “We need to get more people on the Spirits, more freight off the island by adding more day sailings …. the certainty around booking at the moment is really difficult.”
Mr Winter said the impact on would-be Tassie tourists was obvious.
Finland's Rauma Marine Constructions (RMC) recently delivered the first new Spirit vessel to the TT-Line Company ... but it will still be some time unti it is in service. PIC: RMC
“They can book to get here, but they’re not sure they can get off the island and that means they won’t come,” he said. “I’d love to understand why the government is so reluctant to add more day sailings.”
Former chair of Caravanning Tasmania, Rowan Carter, who has run the Huon Valley Caravan Park for 12 years, also wants the current ships to run twice a day … and says he is worried that when the new Spirits arrive, they will only run every few days.
“We have the capacity there, they only need to run it more, and if they increase capacity and run these Spirits more often, tourism will be better,” Mr Carter told the Mercury. “They’re just running at a profit for no reason except to line the coffers of the government, which is a pittance compared to what they’re costing tourism.”
He said the issue was hitting the Tassie’s reputation because people simply can’t get on and off the island when they want to.
“If they have to wait two and three days, fair enough, but waiting three, four of six months they are destroying small business,” Mr Carter said. “Some of the horror stories we’ve heard within the caravan park of people trying to get back on the boat or extend their stay for a few weeks, it’s horrific.”
However, Transport Minister Eric Abetz said it was ‘a matter of great regret’ that the port to accommodate the new Spirit of Tasmania vessels was not built on time, but he insisted it would be a gamechanger when they did go into service.
“Make no mistake, when these two vessels arrive, it will be transformational, not only for our tourism sector,” he told the Mercury. “But also for our producers that need to get their fresh product to Victoria and the mainland for distribution each and every night.”
While the two new larger Spirit of Tasmania vessels are nearing completion in Finland, an infrastructure debacle means the berth in Devonport where they can dock is not set to be ready until February 2027, two and a half years later than originally estimated.
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“Does the difficulty in getting a return crossing scare you off visiting Tasmania at the moment?”
Sure does!
We spent 3 weeks in Tassie a few years ago, that was enough.
There’s too much to see on the mainland to bother going again.
Cost is the biggest issue in getting to Tassie. For 2 people car and camper about $3,000 depending on dates. Love to do it but crazy expensive.
I agree that cost is the biggest factor inhibiting travel to Tassie. Taking a full-height caravan and tug would cost over $1000 above (depending on dates) just a small car and two people With the long waiting list and high cost of boats we will stick to the mainland for now. We went for a couple of weeks about 20 years ago and enjoyed our stay immensely.
What is going to happen to the old ones? Maybe they could keep them in service as well as the new ones to increase capacity instead o selling them.
Doh, just book the return trip at the same time.
What I object to are the huge cancellation fees given they are always booked solid AND have waiting lists. Shouldn’t have to take out travel insurance to travel on a short section of the national highway
We tried in October this year to book a crossing in May next year. When we started looking we could only get a return crossing after 4 weeks. We looked again a week later and found that we could only book the return crossing 6 weeks later, so we instantly booked both crossings. There were NO day crossings at that time of year.
Have missed out going over last year and this year due to difficulty in getting a caravan space. I take my dogs over to complete in dog shows and herding and stay for around three months at a time. Don’t see why they can’t have separate ships for transporting trucks to make more room for vans and RV’s
The mate and l go over every year on our motorbikes no problems booking either way we travel around for 2 weeks stay in motels or caravan parks it’s cheap for us and we have a ball we are 70yrs old once we stop riding no more tassy as taking our vans over with the high cost hard to book fiasco is simply out of the question
Tassie by boat or nogo
For us, the non guarantee re return crossing to mainland, the cost of getting there and back are the reason we haven’t been back in over 20 years albeit we’d like to return for a week or two
Too expensive to get there same as kangaroo island. Years back I hired a plane for a week and used accommodation and hire cars. The hire of the plane was cheaper than a ticket for the three of us. Not much has changed by the looks of it. Leave to the bureaucrats and see what we end up with. Incompetence and no resposibilty taken.
We live in Tassie, it is incredibly hard to get off the island unless you book 12 months in advance.
It is too expensive to go over for a few days and come back. To make it worthwhile you have to go over for weeks at a time.
Too expensive!
The costs for travelling on the Spirit are exorbitant, over 2k for us to take our camper to the other Island. This has definitely Impacted these pensioners and after 15 years of regular yearly travel we are considering other ways to see our country.
The Bass Straight vehice freight equalisation scheme was set up in 1996 by the Australian Government to reduce the costs of seagoing travel between Tasmania and the mainland by providing a rebate for the transportation of an eligible vehicle.
If you take into account the rebate of $1070.00 for an eligable passenger vehice towing a caravan and add the $2k then the full cost would be in excess of three thousand dollars.
I would like to see our Minister Abetz justifying these costs by breaking them down and making it public.
The boat is too expensive for a vehicle & van & can’t get bookings.
We are full time travelers so we can be flexible with sailing dates BUT the extremely high cost to travel with a car & a 29ft 5th wheeler is not justifiable.
We have travelled with our caravan to Tassie twice in the past. Then we swapped our caravan for a boat and used it like a caravan. But when we tried to book the Spirit, they charged us the rate for towing a trailer, which does not attract the tourism discount. Even though our boat had a galley, bathroom and we slept in it. TT-Line refused to give us the discount, so the cost was way too expensive for us. So we don’t go.
Each time we went to Tassie, we stayed for 3 months. We love Tassie and having a boat would have given us a different experience there for another 3 months.
Our 20 ft van plus Dmax seemed to exceed the weekday length limit and I could only book a Sunday sailing, plus it is about $3000 return, plus you land in Tassie at 8.30pm. Hardly good customer service. Sorry Tassie. Lost me.
Hi we recently tried to book a trip across for March 2025 with our mobile home. We could only get a booking across to Tassi on the 6th March and the earliest return trip available was June 22nd! Pre covid we had travelled across every year for 10 years without a worry about bookings no matter the time of year. No idea if we will ever make it over again. It is expensive enough especially when you are locked into a booking one week after paying. A little crazy when you need to book a year ahead at our age