It is eerily quiet on the viewing platform at Scenic World, one of Australia’s most popular tourist attractions nestled high up in the Blue Mountains. Normally, tourists would be excitedly chatting away in multiple languages as they wait to board cable cars that glide over the Jamison Valley, taking in breathtaking views of sandstone rock formations and temperate rainforest. But since social distancing rules were introduced on March 23 the family business has closed and been forced to furlough 180 employees.
“When we had a global financial crisis in 2008, Sars or the September 11 2001 attacks, they took out certain segments of our market but this pandemic has taken out everything,” says David Hammon, a director of Hammons Holdings, which has operated Scenic World in New South Wales for 75 years. “This is one of only a handful of occasions when our family has had to completely close the business.”
Scenic World is one of thousands of tourism businesses that have shut their doors in a sector that contributed A$61bn ($40bn) to the Australian economy last year. A third of people working in accommodation and food services have already lost their jobs due to the government’s policy of putting businesses into “hibernation” following the coronavirus outbreak. And even as Canberra begins to lift elements of its lockdown, following its success in reducing the rate of new infections to just a handful per day, some businesses will struggle to reopen as tourist travel bans threaten to kill demand for months and possibly years to come.