A GROUP of industry bodies in Australia and New Zealand have collaborated on a new plan to form a two-way travel bubble before Christmas.
The cooperation between Australian Chamber – Tourism, the Canberra Business Chamber, Canberra Airport, Wellington Chamber of Commerce and Auckland Business Chamber, is calling for 21 Dec to be the date for a green lane, proposing a two-way proof of concept flight carrying political and business leaders to “get the ball rolling”.
The posited test flight would fly between Canberra and Wellington, and follows a previous attempt to conduct a similar flight back in Jun before it was scuttled by the second wave of infections in Victoria.
Australian Chamber – Tourism Chair John Hart said a two-way, quarantine-free option for Australians was needed sooner rather than later to tap into more than $73 million a week’s worth of tourism value.
“We can already see the latent demand on both sides of the Tasman to get this bubble up and running properly, particularly in tourism,” he said.
“About 1.3 million New Zealanders come to Australia every year, with another 1.8 million travelling to other destinations, if we can win over those 1.8 million travellers and bring them to Australia, it would do wonders for our struggling tourism sector,” Hart added.
The industry groups’ plan heralds multiple benefits for establishing a bubble by Christmas, including the building of travel consumer confidence in a COVID-19-free environment, the bolstering of future bookings and the re-establishment of multiple trans-Tasman flight networks over time.
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Source: traveldaily