Like many tourism operators on Australia’s east coast, Laura Stone has gotten used to watching and reading the weather.
Stone operates Sydney By Kayak and says her business has been deeply impacted by the ongoing heavy rain.
“I would say, without a doubt, that La Niña and the weather we’ve experienced over the last couple of years has affected our business more than the pandemic,” she says.
“We’re probably losing about 50% of bookings because of the rain. I’ve actually had to hire more staff to man the office, to deal with the amount of reschedules and questions on the weather.”
Stone says La Niña events combined with the Covid-19 pandemic and the early 2019 bushfires have sapped her morale.
“They have changed my life,” she says. “Towards the end of last season, I was exhausted from every day checking the weather in the morning. I’d wake up and look out the window and wonder what the weather was doing. It drove me a little insane.”
Eastern Australia is bracing for another wet summer after the Bureau of Meteorology declared a third La Niña in a row last month. Meanwhile, rainfall records were broken in parts of Victoria and Tasmania this week, leaving many tourism operators reeling.
Terry Cole, a mountain biking operator in northern Tasmania, says his business has been heavily affected by the flooding on Friday.
“It’s a big hit to us,” he says. “We’re going to be shut down for a couple of days because of the rain and it’s the first time in a while the trails have had to close.
“It’s mainly the creeks crossing the trails that have swelled, making it dangerous to go down. But it means we’ve had to refund all the existing bookings over the next couple of days.”
Cole says his business, MTB Express, usually closes during the winter, making shutdowns due to rain particularly painful.
“We were finally cranking again after two years of Covid and we had a bit of money in the bank, some people employed, but we’ve had to stop and refund people. It’s very frustrating,” he says.
Harry Fraser, a pilot for hot air balloon operator Geelong Ballooning, says the rain means none of the balloons are able to take off.
“The areas we use to take off and land have been under water and it’s hard finding a dry enough area to inflate the balloons and fly them,” he says.
“Access is also an issue due to the flooding. This sort of downpour just puts everything under water. We just had to cancel everything over the weekend and take the hit. We’re treating it with caution. We might have to push everything back next weekend as well.”
In its severe weather outlook, released on Monday, the BoM warned of an increased risk of widespread flooding and cyclones around the country – particularly in eastern and northern Australia over the coming months, as La Niña combines with a negative Indian Ocean dipole in the west to fuel the wet conditions.
Tristan Harley from Emu Trekkers, a not-for-profit organisation offering hiking tours around NSW, says the rain has severely affected bookings and even changed the trails.
“There are many trails and access points that closed at one point due to the rain and have remained closed. Some of these trails have been extensively damaged and would take a lot of work to repair,” he says.
“That is in addition to the rain itself causing bookings and hikes to be cancelled. The impact of the weather has been sustained and protracted.”
Harley says in 2019, before the pandemic and bushfires, Emu Trekkers were running five hikes a week on average. Now they’re running about one hike a month.
“We’ve been operating on a heavily reduced schedule because of the weather. And the damage done to the trails means the impacts are ongoing, not just seasonal.” he says.
“We now have to work on plan B or plan C – there is always some element of a trail that has been impacted, changing the experience. It means our rebound after the pandemic has been difficult. There is so much uncertainty about how the weather will affect things going forward.”
Even popular tourism services that can operate in rainfall, such as BridgeClimb in Sydney, have been affected.
Ali Cassim, head of marketing at BridgeClimb, says up to 60% of climbs can be cancelled on a rainy day.
“Just like the rest of Sydney, it’s hard to be faced with the constant poor weather,” she says.
“Obviously, from the bushfires and straight on to Covid, it’s very much still a recovering business. The summer of the bushfires was the first time we had been heavily impacted in 21 years of operation.
“We’re still regaining our footing, so when you’re hit by the impacts of La Niña as well, it makes for a tough time.”
