Tourism providers are preparing for a bumper summer season says Tourism Northern Tasmania chief executive Chris Griffin.
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Airlines Qantas and Virgin Australia have both added extra flights into Launceston Airport during peak days in late December and early January, which is expected to have flow on effects for hospitality and accommodation providers.
Mr Griffin said any additional flights into Launceston had an immediate benefit for Northern Tasmania, as well as regional Tasmania across the North and North-West.
“It’s actually really important that we see an increase in capacity into Launceston Airport,” he said.
He said the feeling is generally postive in the tourism industry in terms of forward bookings during summer.
“We’re also predicting an ongoing summer in terms of visitor numbers travelling through as late as mid-May,” Mr Griffin said.
“We should be having a pretty solid season until Easter, however we have some really major events happening during the April period and the first weekend of May is Agfest as usual, but the second weekend of May will see Hawthorn versus St Kilda. Those big events prop up visitation capacity in the accommodation sector, which will extend summer well into Autumn.”
Forward bookings do a great deal for business confidence said the tourism chief.
“You’re more confident to put on staff and roster staff across the hours needed and keep your doors open,” Mr Griffin said.
"If you're a cafe or restaurant and you can see there is going to be a strong demand for your services then you would be re-considering some of your opening hours which is always important.
“Generally speaking, this is the six months of the year where our industry is most profitable so it’s really important that they do make as much money in this period before those slower months, that’s not saying they are not profitable, but this is when most of the businesses do well.”
Mr Griffin said he believed Northern providers were ready to handle extra demand for services, but there may be some employment shortages.
“We’ll start to hear this summer perhaps that there was a bit of a shortage in terms of skilled labor and we had been anticipating that for awhile,” he said.
“With another strong summer it will be the third strong summer in a row … so we will be keeping an eye on that to see how it tracks.”