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Indonesian hospitality and service businesses in Australia hopeful following border reopen
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Ready to roll: Nuribena Harefa is looking forward to the border opening as most of her guests are international visitors. Her family's lifelihood has been constrained due to the drastic decline of international tourists.(Courtesy of Nuribena Harefa) (Personal Collection/Courtesy of Nuribena Harefa)
With the Australian border reopened, Indonesian hospitality industry players hope to return with vigor.
The Australian government has announced that they are reopening their borders to fully vaccinated tourists starting Feb. 21. This news has been greeted positively by many Indonesian-run businesses in the country, as well as Indonesians working in businesses there.
Throughout the pandemic, many had to take on second jobs to survive.
The tourism sector in Australia has plunged since the start of the pandemic. From January to March 2021, employment in the tourism industry fell by 5.1 percent to 662,700 workers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported.
Due to the absence of international visitors, hotels in the Victorian region lost AU$1.7 billion (US$1.23 billion) revenue in March 2021 due to the low hotel occupancy rate. In Sydney, hotel occupancy reached only 2 percent due to the lockdown in July 2021.
Hopeful
Chief among those in the hospitality sector are Indonesians who own or work in restaurants as well as homestay owners, both within the central business districts and in rural areas.
