All adults in NSW will receive a $50 “Stay and Rediscover” voucher next year to use towards accommodation to boost the state’s tourism sector.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet announced more than $500 million in investment this morning to “drive tourism opportunities right across the state”, half of which is allocated to the voucher redemption scheme.
It comes as NSW reported 283 new local cases of COVID-19 and seven deaths. A total of 81.6 per cent of the state’s population aged over 16 are fully vaccinated, with 75.4 per cent of 12-to-15-year-olds having had one dose.
A man in his 40s from the NSW Hunter region was among seven new deaths from COVID-19 reported in the state on Wednesday. The Maitland man died at hospital and was not vaccinated.
Three other men have died in regional NSW since yesterday’s update, all of whom were aged in their 90s and acquired their infection at aged care facilities. Two of the men were fully vaccinated residents of the Tarrawana aged care facility, north of Wollongong. A third man was a resident at the Mercy Place aged care facility at Albury, in southern NSW, and was not vaccinated.
The remaining three deaths were a partially vaccinated man in his 50s from inner Sydney who died at home and tested positive after his death, a woman in her 70s also from the inner city and a woman in her 70s from south-west Sydney. Both women were not vaccinated.
Speaking in Sydney on Wednesday morning, Mr Perrottet said he wanted the tourism funding to “supercharge” businesses and attractions.
He said the accommodation program is being piloted and will kick-in statewide in March. The vouchers will become available in the Service NSW app.
Travel for holidays and recreation between Sydney and the regions will resume for those fully vaccinated against COVID-19 on November 1.
NSW Tourism Minister Stuart Ayres said they were expecting a “strong tourism summer” and the March start date for the accommodation voucher program was to “stretch it out through those shoulder periods” into June.
The program was initially announced as $100 vouchers to use in the Sydney CBD, but Mr Ayres said this was delayed after “the Delta variant kicked in”. The new program is $50 and can be used across the state.
Last week the state government announced residents would receive two additional $25 Dine and Discover vouchers, to use towards hospitality and entertainment and valid until June 2022.
The tourism investment includes a $60 million aviation attraction fund, and Mr Ayres said they will be “aggressively in the market” to get international airlines to offer more flights into Sydney.
The flight package will include subsidies, such as for empty seats, and marketing campaign opportunities in partnership with the state government and Destination NSW.
Mr Ayres said airlines had been making commercial decisions to re-allocate flights away from Australia and Sydney Airport had been operating at about one per cent of its traditional revenue.
“We should not be arrogant enough to think that just because we’ve reopened the border, or we’ve removed quarantine, that every commercial operator around the world is just going to come back to Australia,” he said.
Mr Perrottet said by scrapping quarantine for fully vaccinated international arrivals and having the aviation attraction fund, NSW was indicating to the rest of the country and the world that it was open for business.
“No one is going to travel to Australia if you’ve got to sit in a hotel for two weeks, and you can’t leave,” he said.
“If you wait [to act], you won’t get the outcome.”
Mr Ayres also announced $150 million within the tourism recovery package to support small, medium and large events, including $50 million focused on the regions.
“This is about making sure that those events that might have fallen over, over the last two years, can get back on their feet,” he said.
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