Established by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the newly created Tourism Restart Taskforce is charged with co-ordinating and strengthening the industry response to the COVID-19 crisis.
ATEC Chair, Denis Pierce and Jacqui Walshe Managing Director of The Walshe Group and ATEC board member, will join leaders from across the sector. The Taskforce will feed into the National COVID-19 Coordination Commission and the Austrade Tourism Incident Response Coordination group. Through ACCI it will feed into the Business Liaison Group in Treasury and the Department of Industry recovery group.
“Our tourism and hospitality industry has had a knockout blow causing widespread damage to hundreds of thousands of businesses and livelihoods across the nation,” Mr Pierce said.
“This forum provides a vehicle to move our industry through this troubled period as a united voice.”
Ms Walshe said it was important for the industry to be working collectively to find solutions to ensure the survival of the essential operational framework that the industry relies upon.
“All businesses in the tourism economy are struggling with the scale of this impact and many of our tourism businesses are genuinely worried about the survival of their organisation and the potential long-term damage to the whole sector.
“This taskforce brings together many of our key industry bodies and is an opportunity for cooperation and collaboration in finding the right solutions for all of us to ensure tourism is able to recover its ability to make a genuine and significant contribution to the Australian economy.”
Jacqui Walshe and Denis Pierce join other members of the Taskforce:
Jeremy Johnson
ACCI Board, former CEO Sovereign Hill (Chair)
The Hon. Martin Ferguson
Tourism Accommodation Australia
Bob East
Tourism Australia
Sarina Bratton
Ponant, CLIA
Nikki Govan
Star of Greece, Business SA
Graham (Skroo) Turner
Flight Centre, AFTA
The Hon. Bruce Baird
Business Events Sydney, TTF
Geoff Donaghy
CEO, ICC Sydney
John Hart
Australian Chamber – Tourism
