For couples who have been separated by border closures, the reopening is more than just news.
Danielle Vogl and her US partner Eric Lochner have been apart since October 2019.
She burst into tears, knowing they could finally reunite, when Australia's hard border came down for the first time in two years.
"I actually woke him up to tell him, because I thought it was big enough news to do that," the Canberra woman told the ABC.
"He couldn't believe it … he was like, 'are you sure, is this true', and I'm like, 'yes, it's happening'.
Ms Vogl said her partner's flight to Australia in April 2020 was cancelled due to COVID and later he was unable to get a travel exemption as the couple were not married or living together at the time.
Talking to each other virtually was the only way to keep the relationship going.
"It's all a credit to our relationship that we've survived it, but there were a lot of really sad times."
Ms Vogl will wait until April for her reunion but for many tourism operators, the return of international travellers can not come soon enough.
Tourists have started to flow in as operators cheer
Michael Betteridge, general manager of Fantasea Cruising, was over the moon when he discovered a group of British tourists on his Sydney Harbour cruise.
"I'm so excited to be able to welcome people back and it's great to see people already starting to trickle through," he told the ABC.
According to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), there were 265,450 overseas arrivals in January, the highest result since international border restrictions were imposed in March 2020.
But that only accounts for about one-tenth of the travel volume pre-COVID.
In January 2020, there were 2.26 million overseas arrivals.
The travel and tourism industry has been hit hard during the pandemic – businesses being forced to shut down and tour operators leaving the industry for more secure jobs.
The sector estimates it has lost more than $4 billion a month due to the lack of holiday makers from overseas.
Mr Betteridge said the cruising company used to host hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, but the pandemic forced the business to close during the lockdowns.
While he's optimistic about the future, Mr Betteridge said there were still ongoing challenges for the sector.
"What we're looking at is scaling up [our capacity] over the coming year," he said.
"We're all looking at how do we attract people back into the industry."
Margy Osmond, chief executive officer of Tourism and Transport Forum Australia (TTF), agreed.
"And all of that led to the difficulty in servicing both local and international visitors.
"We need international students. We need the backpackers back. And then we need the capacity to bring in people with particular skills via the visa system."
How quickly will tourists return?
It is expected that more international visitors will come back later this year, and families and friends of Australian residents are likely to lead the first wave of travel returns.
But how quickly tourists will return to pre-COVID levels remains a question, as the timing of the border reopening has missed the peak summer holiday season.
"The world of travel has changed globally, it's not just about Australia, and travel confidence is not what it once was.
"But realistically speaking, I can't see it as being at a level that there was anything like we were pre-pandemic until two or three years from now."
At the start of the pandemic, Australia locked its borders to keep COVID out but now the tables have turned.
Despite high vaccination rates, Australia has hit 3 million COVID cases and the majority of them were recorded during the recent Omicron outbreaks.
Many travellers from New Zealand, China and the US — the leading source countries for visitor arrivals pre-pandemic — remain vigilant.
China's civil aviation administration issued circuit-breaker orders to suspend several flights from Sydney and Melbourne due to Omicron outbreaks last month and its "zero-COVID" policy and lengthy quarantine restrictions continue to make travel difficult.
Health authorities in New Zealand and the US have slapped "do not travel" warnings on Australia amid the surge in Omicron cases.
Global race to capture new markets
While Australian borders have reopened without quarantine for fully vaccinated international visitors, Western Australia remains an exception, set to open up on March 3.
Australia is behind destinations like Thailand and the UK, which opened earlier and have also scrapped quarantine restrictions for fully jabbed visitors.
Last week, Tourism Australia made its first move to salvage the sector, rolling out a $40 million campaign, Come and Say G'Day – Don't Go Small, in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Canada.
Tourism Minister Dan Tehan said the campaign was just the first step in a long-term strategy to restart tourism to Australia and will invest more in assisting tourism recovery later this year.
However, a new survey by the Australian Tourism Export Council (ATEC) found 66 per cent of inbound tour operators have raised concerns over consumers lacking confidence to book their travel to Australia.
"While the government has invested in global advertising to drive demand to return to Australia, there are worrying signs consumers are wary of travelling here with confusion over our various state travel restrictions and concern about snap border closures," managing director Peter Shelley said.
TTF's Ms Osmond said travel confidence would continue to be the biggest issue and time is what is needed.
"Australia needs to do a lot of work. We have reputation-building to do and we have to restore [the confidence of] people and operators like airlines."
Long haul for travel and tourism recovery
Aviation capacity is another vital factor in the post-COVID recovery of the travel and tourism industry.
Although Qantas and Virgin Australia have plans to open more international routes later this year, both airlines have announced they would temporarily slash their international capacity due to travel demand, staff isolation and the Omicron situation.
Last month, Qantas said its international flying would reduce from 30 per cent of pre-pandemic levels to 20 per cent in the March quarter, despite CEO Alan Joyce being confident the airline could return to 100 per cent of its pre-COVID volume as soon as 2023.
Virgin Australia said it would cut capacity across its network by around 25 per cent for January and February and it has suspended its only international service, the Sydney-Fiji route.
The pandemic has brought the industry to its knees, with Virgin Australia going into voluntary administration and Qantas standing down tens of thousands of staff.
"The toll on the staff of Qantas and Virgin has been very savage, with lots of pilots, for instance, having to drive combine harvesters just to make ends meet," aviation analyst Geoffrey Thomas told the ABC.
Airlines have been affected by major incidents but they quickly recovered.
Mr Thomas said COVID was a different situation and international travel went down to about 10 per cent of what it was in January 2020, leaving the global aviation industry with a $200 billion damage bill.
"With 9/11, travel certainly took a really big hit in the United States. Not so for the rest of the world and [it] took the US a couple of years to recover.
"The big hit for SARS was Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific … when the World Health Organization announced that SARS was over, almost instantly passengers came back.
"COVID [is] a very different picture."
Mr Thomas said the COVID testing regime and quarantine requirements would be the primary impediments for the travel and tourism rebound.
Back in Canberra, while Danielle couldn't wait to see her partner fall in love with the country again, she has a message to other visitors.
"I can understand the hesitation of people, but Australia is a beautiful place and we do better when people come."
Watch the story on The Business tonight at 8:45pm AEDT on ABC News Channel, or stream on ABC iview.
