Nine thousand tourism jobs – more than half of the local industry's workforce – have been lost in Far North Queensland since the pandemic began, according to the region's peak body.
It has been a dire two years for the tropical city of Cairns – known as the home of the Great Barrier Reef and world-heritage listed rainforests – with southern lockdowns and international border closures smashing an industry once worth $2.5 billion annually.
Tourism Tropical North Queensland chief executive Mark Olsen said the region's tourism industry employed 15,750 full and part-time staff before the pandemic began.
But with the loss of the federal government's JobKeeper program, many workers had been forced to leave the industry for good.
"Without international visitation, we've lost about 9,000 staff over the last 22 months," Mr Olsen said.
"At first it was the frontline staff — those on the part-time and casual roles, but as the pandemic extended on, we started losing highly skilled staff.
"We've lost a lot of skill and experience that has guided the region, which has been one of the most successful tourism destinations, over the last 30 years."
Quarantine-free international travel for the fully-vaccinated into Queensland came into effect on Saturday for the first time since the spread of COVID-19 led to the closure of Australia's border almost two years ago.
But an influx of international tourists could be some time away.
The federal government is limiting overseas arrivals mainly to returning Australian residents, working visa holidays and international students.
'Big losses' despite open border
Cairns restaurateur Craig Squire has been serving up modern Australian cuisine since 1994.
Normally his waterfront restaurant would operate seven days a week, but he has been forced to cut back due to a lack of staff, many of whom are waiting on COVID-19 test results.
He said the normally busy Christmas holiday period had been anything but.
"The first week of January, we had five staff out waiting on test results, so that really put a dampener on what would have been a quite a successful trading week," Mr Squire said.
"It's been a terrible January — there's big losses."
Mr Squire said one of the biggest impediments to his business had been the mandating of vaccination for those dining in restaurants.
"The concept that the unvaccinated can't go to restaurants and cafes but can go to gyms and hairdressers and food courts, even licensed food courts, it just doesn't stick," he said.
"It basically started as a coercive measure to get more people vaccinated — we're at 90 per cent fully vaccinated in Cairns now so surely we can let go of that.
