It’s been a long wait for grey nomads but what has long seemed like an impossible dream – a borderless Big Lap – today become a reality again.
WA’s hard border is coming down this morning, and Australia will once again be united, although only triple vaccinated people will be permitted into Western Australia from interstate.
The West Australian newspaper reports that just under 28,000 G2G passes for travel into WA have been approved, which it says indicates a trickle rather than a flood of visitors lining up to enter the State over the coming week.
And Tourism Council WA chief executive, Evan Hall, says the reason for that is the McGowan Government’s backflip on allowing quarantine-travel from early February.
Mr Hall claims that the move had resulted in mass cancellations from interstate holidaymakers and there was little evidence they were rushing to return.
He said the majority of people landing in WA in coming days were interstate residents reuniting with family or friends.
“We lost a lot of those people who had planned a leisure trip from February 5 because of the border delay and we haven’t really picked up bookings since, although I expect that will begin to change when they see the border is definitely open,” Mr Hall said. “I don’t think leisure travel will really start to kick in until the latter half of April.”
He said some regional operators would now be getting fewer bookings from West Australians previously trapped within the State, but he said ‘they were never spending much money here anyway’.
“We will now be getting interstate and international tourists who will spend a lot more than West Australians,” Mr Hall said. “And the focus should be on investing heavily to market WA to them.”
Premier Mark McGowan told the West Australian that the plan was to do just that, although he could not predict when interstate and international visitation would return to pre-Covid levels.
And he rejected the suggestion the State’s tourism credentials had been damaged by its long period of isolation.
“Our reputation will be as the safest jurisdiction in the world that handled Covid the best in the world,” Mr McGowan said.
Yippee we heading over at Easter to see the grandkids it’s been 3 years since we seen them
Heading east fromWA tomorrow. To see son in Adelaide Yippee!
Hotel California is open for business.
We were fortunate to manage to travel from Qld this time last year and enter WA from SA at beginning of April 2021. Spent 7 months exploring WA from top to bottom and East to West. A great experience and would thoroughly recommend. Of course it was totally covid free then so no restrictions so might be a little different this year.
No no a thousand times no
the premier is a dunce and the hospitality sector will continue to suffer