Australia’s secretary of the health department, Brendan Murphy, says Australia will keep borders closed until 2022. Even with the advancement in vaccines, he had this to say.
“I think that we’ll go most of this year with still substantial border restrictions — even if we have a lot of the population vaccinated, we don’t know whether that will prevent transmission of the virus,”
Meaning those without exceptions from the government are unable to travel internationally. Leaving many Australians wondering if they should make plans. In which they made 11 million trips abroad in 2019.
An example of how stern Australia’s restrictions are can be seen with the ban on New Zealand, where they have an average of 4 cases a day over a 7-day period. To put that in perspective, the US has 1,164,050 a day over a 7-day average. However, the new South African variant has been found in New Zealand. On top of that, the US banned non-citizens from South Africa.
Another aspect is what happens to Whistrailia. Every year Australians flock to Whistler for employment. Correspondingly many guests of Whistler are also from Australia. Meaning Canda could see less of their British cousins going into next season as well. You can hear SnowBrains creator Miles talk to Marc Riddell about that on our podcast. They go over the struggles faced by operations with these limits.
Additionally, while it’s not ski season in Australia yet, Epic and Ikon have resorts in Australia and New Zealand. So if Australia does keep its borders closed, this would have a serious impact on tourism revenue. In 2019 Australia generated 15.8 billion dollars from international travelers.
