The economic recovery from the COVID pandemic continues to be slow with a $1.5 billion hole remaining in Victoria’s tourism sector. China is by far the most important tourism market for the state but it's still far behind where it was, prompting calls for greater action.
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00:00 There's plenty of planes touching down from China.
00:05 But its human cargo is no longer as valuable.
00:09 And the aircrafts are somewhat full, but we haven't seen the Chinese tourists return specifically.
00:15 Chinese tourists are by far the most important visitors to the state's economy.
00:19 Before the pandemic, tourists from China spent $3.3 billion in Victoria.
00:23 Last year it was $1.7 billion.
00:25 The Chinese market pre-COVID was worth more to Victoria than the next nine international markets that come to our shores.
00:33 Before COVID, Greg O'Donoghue's winery on the Mornington Peninsula was open every day.
00:38 But now it's open less.
00:40 You know, in mid-week we'd be getting Chinese groups coming through,
00:44 which would allow us to operate in an environment that was viable.
00:49 But at the moment, there's just not enough numbers coming through.
00:52 The pandemic and deteriorating relations between Australia and China hurt all aspects of trade.
00:57 Victorian wine, barley and lobster exports to China all ground to a halt.
01:01 Those tariffs are now being lifted.
01:03 We really need airfares to come down and the whole cost across the board to be more viable.
01:10 Group travel was important for Victorian tourism, but until August last year it was banned by China.
01:15 And the restart has been slow.
01:17 Capital Airlines is adding more flights to Melbourne, but the sector is urging governments to do more to resurrect the trade,
01:23 especially given the speed of the recovery elsewhere.
01:25 New South Wales is performing extremely well.
01:27 They've returned about 96% of their pre-COVID spend.
01:31 Queensland has returned about 94%.
01:35 We're sitting at about 73%.
01:37 So there's a pretty big gap.
01:39 I have some confidence that China will rebound even further this year in terms of the actual numbers of people coming here.
01:45 And we expect by 2028, the next four years, it to be above where it was.
01:50 Business hopes that that confidence takes off.
01:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]