Australia’s largest hotel operator Accor has accused the Palaszczuk Government of turning its back on workers and demanded it release a roadmap out of the border restrictions.
A day after throwing a lifeline to the Gold and Sunshine coast tourism sectors through subsidised airfares, Accor Pacific’s chief executive Simon McGrath said the State Government was “making the workforce suffer with the crippling uncertainty they have created”.
Accor has 101 properties and 4200 employees in the state.
McGrath stated that “It is astonishing that a Labor State Government is turning its back on tourism workers by providing people with no clue as to when the borders will re-open, this is killing livelihoods and it is killing Queensland’s tourism industry. Every day tourism businesses are losing money and now there is a very real chance they will miss out on Christmas which means businesses will be forced to close. The Queensland State Government is failing the workforce. It is time to set a firm date and reopen Queensland.”
Tourism Minister Stirling Hinchliffe said the Government wanted to keep the Delta virus out of the state and Queenslanders out of hospital intensive care beds.
He went on to further comment by stating that “The Palaszczuk Government’s number one priority is the safety of Queenslanders, and we’ll always follow the expert medical advice of the Chief Health Officer, We’ve committed more than $1 billion in direct support for the tourism industry because there are no quick and easy solutions out of the pandemic. The Prime Minister’s decisions not to continue with JobKeeper- style payments for tourism until the pandemic recovery, or move more swiftly on securing vaccines, have left one of Queensland’s most important industries in unprecedented difficulty.”
