Tassie tourism chiefs have warmly welcomed indications from the federal government that it may being willing to extend free car travel on the Spirit of Tasmania beyond June.
The chief executive of the Tasmanian Tourism Industry Council, Luke Martin, said such a move would make sense on many levels.
“If the initiative is working as well as it is, and judging by how full the forward monthly sailings are on the Spirit at the moment, it’s working, I don’t know why you would remove it at the end of June in the middle of winter,” he told the Advocate newspaper. “If it’s working and a very effective stimulus for visitation into the regions, I would be very interested to see if the case is there to extend it for a time to come.”
The scheme – which was introduced after the coronavirus pandemic hit Tasmania’s tourism industry hard and bookings on the Spirit of Tasmania dropped by up to 85% – currently allows for free travel for cars and motorbikes from the start of this month until June 30. The free vehicle fare is based on a standard car, or a campervan or motorhome less than two metres wide and up to six metres in length. Vehicles greater than two metres wide and six metres in length, such as a caravan, will receive a discount equivalent to that of a standard car.
So far, more than 28,000 cars, 200 motorbikes, 1500
motorhomes, and 1400 caravans have been booked on the Spirit of Tasmania under
the program.
Mr Martin said if the bookings continued to be good, the case would write
itself to keep going and extend free car travel to the end of the year.
In the meantime, Mr Martin rejected some people’s claims that Spirit fares had gone up since the subsidy came in.
“TT-Line has said very clearly they have not changed their pricing structure,” Mr Martin told the Advocate. “They do dynamic pricing, and the reason they do that is to support the business model to allow more daytime crossings which are very cheap.”
He said flexibility was key.
“You can certainly get some very low-cost crossings, particularly on the day crossings with free car travel when I think it’s $300 return,” he said. “But if you’re going to go in the middle of March on a Saturday night and book two weeks out, you will be lucky to get on, and it’s going to be a premium price that’s the reality of the airlines and TT-Line.”
Wow I didn’t know about this. They took our money to take our Motor home over, then the fire’s started and because of my partners breathing problems we cancelled. They keeped most of our money which was terrible.
Rather than cancel and receive only portion of the fare back, suggest you just change the date. Free uf done on line.