As an initiative of Australian Chamber – Tourism, many employers across the Australian travel, tourism, hospitality, accommodation and events industry are offering to reimburse the visa fees paid by working holiday makers coming to Australia that work for them.
A Tourism Restart Taskforce has been established by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry under the auspices of the Australian Chamber – Tourism. Tourism has hit harder than any other industry by the current COVID crisis, and with the health concerns having been largely managed, a plan for how best to restart tourism is needed. The Taskforce will feed into the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission and the Austrade Tourism Incident Response Coordination group. Through ACCI it will feed into the Business Liaison Group in Treasury and the Department of Industry recovery group.
You can contact the taskforce via: [email protected].
Members of the Tourism Restart Taskforce
Dr. Jeremy Johnson AM (Taskforce Chair) (ACCI Board, former CEO of Sovereign Hill)
The Hon. Bruce Baird AM (Business Events Sydney, TTF)
Sarina Bratton AM (Ponant)
Geoff Donaghy (BECA, ASM Global, ICC Sydney)
Bob East (Tourism Australia)
The Hon. Martin Ferguson AM (Tourist Accommodation Australia)
Nikki Govan (Star of Greece)
Denis Pierce (Australian Tourism Export Council)
Graham (Skroo) Turner (Flight Centre)
Jacqui Walshe (The Walshe Group)
John Hart (Australian Chamber – Tourism)
Secretariat
Jenny Lambert , Director – Tourism at ACCI
Below are the weekly Tourism Restart Taskforce meeting notes available for download.
The Taskforce has now released its Tourism Restart Plan. This plan provides a runway back to operations for the industries that comprise Australia’s largest services export
and the creator of one in 13 jobs in the Australian economy.
The Tourism COVID Safe Guiding Principles, signed off by the Tourism Restart Taskforce in May 2020, set out a framework for protocols that are suitable for businesses across tourism. They have also been used to craft proposals to government and health authorities to demonstrate how industry can successfully and safely restart.
Click here to view the Recommendations for change to Business Exhibitions, Meetings and Events Restrictions
Click here to view the Proposal for change to Dining Restrictions
Click here to view the Recommendations for change to Bus and Coach Transport Restrictions
*Version 2.0 updated October 2020
To help guide advocacy for a more certain timetable for tourism restart, and with input from the ACCI Tourism Policy Committee, the Tourism Restart Taskforce has proposed a timetable for tourism restart. The updated Timetable 2.0 reflects what industry feels are realistic restart targets for governments and health authorities to consider given the status of the COVID-19 pandemic as at October 2020. An explanatory guide to the Timetable can be found here.