NSW Lockdowns See School Holiday Visitation to Snowy Mountains Drop 70%

Mountainwatch |Reggae Elliss

Yesterday was shaping up as the busiest afternoon for accommodation providers in the Snowy Mountains in a few years, with occupancy for the two weeks of NSW school holidays at close to 100%. However, the two-week “stay at home” lockdown announced on Saturday for Sydney, the Central Coast, Blue Mountains and Wollongong resulted in yesterday’s check-ins for this week in Jindabyne, Thredbo and Perisher plummeting from 100% to as low at 30%.

While visitors from regional NSW and the ACT may take advantage of the availability of lift tickets and accommodation and fill in some gaps, the lockdown is a big blow for the NSW resorts, Snowy Mountains businesses and the local community.

The point was driven home when I walked through Thredbo Village at 8am this morning and passed only one person and the shuttle buses were empty. Normally on the first day of school holidays the village is full, there are lines at the bust stops and there is a bustling vibe. This morning it feel like mid-November.

Prior to Saturday’s announcement there were already thousands of visitors from the locked down areas in the mountains. However, if they had been in those locked-down areas on or after June 21, the stay at home order applies and many had to cut their snow holiday short.

The stay at home orders mean you need a reasonable excuse to leave home which include:

–  Shopping for essential goods and services.

–   Medical care or companionate needs.

–   Exercise outdoors in groups of 10 or fewer.

–   Essential work, or education, where you cannot work or study from home

For the rest of NSW, the restrictions include face masks are mandatory in non-residential indoor settings, household visitors limited to five, you must be seated while drinking at licensed premises and the one person per four square metres rule has been re-introduced for all indoor and outdoor settings. This affectively reduces the capacity, and turnover, at restaurants and cafes to 25%, a massive downturn being felt by small businesses throughout NSW.

Ian Foster, former president of Thredbo Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Lantern accommodation services in Thredbo, one of the resorts biggest operators, told Mountainwatch yesterday afternoon that their check-ins were down to 50% and is “still dropping”.

“It is devastating for businesses and the many guests who have had to cancel their holidays. We just hope the lockdown delivers a result.”

For retailers in the resorts, Jindabyne and Cooma, the school holidays are the busiest two weeks of the year and typically account for 25-30% of the turnover for the season. The NSW Snowsports Interschool events, a big contributor to equipment sales, were scheduled for Perisher and Thredbo over the school holidays, but will not go ahead as planned.

The expected downturn in sales over the next two weeks for ski/snowboard retailers, both in the mountains and the locked down areas, will be significant and will have a rippling affect throughout the Australian snow industry, which just recovering after the massive hit it took last year.

However, unlike Victoria in 2020, it is not all doom and gloom and Thredbo, Perisher and Charlotte Passare open for visitors from regional NSW and the ACT and will continue to operate under Covid-19 Operating Plans developed under the guidance of NSW Heath.

At the moment the snow cover in the NSW resorts is ordinary with limited terrain open and the snow pack took a big hit from last week’s 100mm of rain. However, it has improved over the past few days with 10-15cms of snow above 1700 metres accompanied by moderate northwest winds which have helped fill in the terrain at upper elevations.

The resorts are continuing on-mountain operations as per normal and are working on getting more terrain open and the snowmakers have been taking advantage of the sub-zero temps over the last two nights.

“Our team is focussed on opening more terrain as soon as possible,” said Thredbo General manager Stuart Diver. “Antons T-bar made its debut today and, depending on weather conditions, more terrain is planned to open throughout the week.”

The weather conditions are looking good for snowmaking over the next couple of nights ahead of snow later in the week, the Grasshopper writing in his extended forecast today that while there is disagreement in the models “we’ll see light to moderate falls from Friday to Sunday.”

It is a long way out, but there is also a chance of snow around July 8-9 and in a perfect world we’d get 30cms and the lockdowns will end as hoped on July 9. While the world is anything but perfect, we can always hope, and optimism is a good thing.