Property Council welcomes the end of hotel quarantine

The Property Council of Australia has backed the decision by the NSW Government to remove hotel quarantine to new and returning fully vaccinated travellers, returning hotels to their primary role.

NSW Property Council’s Executive Director Luke Achterstraat said the announcement was a significant moment in re-opening the state as we learn to live with COVID.

“During the pandemic, hotels allowed travellers to safely enter Australia while keeping the Australian public safe,” Mr Achterstraat said.

“Hotel workers and staff have been on the front line of this pandemic, with ongoing management of active COVID travellers coming back from high-risk countries for the entirety of the past 18 months, even when local community cases were at zero.

“Between late March and October last year, more than 90,000 travellers passed through hotel quarantine in NSW.”

Mr Achterstraat said the move was a boost for the hotels industry and Australians abroad and home.

“As we remain on our roadmap to a post COVID-19 world, we will continue to welcome positive, sensible changes that bring forward less restrictions and greater freedoms,” he said.

“To support the hotel industry to thrive, we need to have a plan ready for an injection of efforts into Greater Sydney’s revitalisation as we come out of this lockdown.”

Mr Achterstraat said staffing, operations, spending, and revenue had fallen to their lowest levels since the start of the pandemic for the hotels industry.

“We welcome our hotels to returning travellers and we are excited by the prospect of our borders reopening in November as we return to normal life,” he said.

“Hotel quarantine was set up by governments to ensure pressure was removed from the existing system and overall has worked to keep Australians in an enviably safe state for the most part.

“However, it’s now been over 20 months since COVID-19 hit our shores and our record vaccination rates now give us the opportunity to learn to live with the virus and move toward reopening international and domestic tourism to all.

“The record vaccination rates are a credit to the commitment of the people in New South Wales doing the right thing in virus management. We will continue to highlight the importance of people continuing to abide by public health measures to keep each other safe.

“This measure requires us all to do our part in keeping each other safe, by continuing to get vaccinated, following the health advice on social distancing, QR codes, masks and other community measures we can all help with.”