Businesses are calling for extra assistance in the wake of the scheduled closure of the support on March 31, with many travel agencies not seeing the full benefit of the Federal Government’s $128 million relief package announced in December 2020.
Echuca Travel Centre’s Alex Rickards said her company faced the prospect of almost working for nothing.
“JobKeeper is one of the only things that has kept us going,” she said.
“We need some type of support because the number of new bookings isn’t likely to increase until international borders are re-opened.
“The challenge is that a lot of people are being given refunds or credits.
“When we’re dealing with credits our business is not making any money off of those.”
Federal Member for Nicholls Damian Drum took the region’s plight to Canberra on February 15 when he spoke about the issues in the Federation Chamber.
It came after a meeting with businesses from across the electorate on February 10.
“There is around $4 billion of Australia's money that is stuck somewhere effectively in an airlines’ account, or some overseas travel agents’ account, a tour operator or some accommodation house and all of this money has effectively had to be reprocessed back either in line of refunds or in the form of credits,” Mr Drum said.
“JobKeeper is fine for their wages, but they are also going to need additional help in relation to paying their utilities and their other ongoing expenses.
“If we don't offer them (travel agencies) the assistance that they need, they will go to the wall.
“If these travel agents go out of business because we can't get the right assistance to them, we're going to have a whole cohort of Australians who are not going to be quite sure who it is that is going to help them get their refund or get their credit lined up.
“They need additional assistance and I'm sure we are looking forward to announcements in the future.”
As part of the $128 million relief package, the government is offering a minimum payment of $1500 for a business with a turnover of $50,000 up to a maximum payment of $100,000 for a business with a $20 million turnover.
Many smaller operators only count the money they make from commissions (usually about 10 per cent of a booking), rather than the total amount passing through their hands and on to other businesses like airlines and cruise companies.
“The criteria wasn’t narrowed down enough in my opinion,” Ms Rickards said.
“There are people out there who have missed out on a lot money.”
Mr Drum said he was determined to keep the travel agency business alive through this period.
“It’s a two-pronged thing,” he said.
“We’ve got to fix the $128 million up because that’s been confusing and erratic in the way it’s been able to get to some but not to others.
“Secondly, we’re going to have to put some level of support in place for the travel agents post-March,” he said.
“We haven’t been as articulate as we should have been with the $128 million and we need to fix that up immediately.
“There is evidence that there’s an absolute sheer necessity for them to keep working. In Australia, we’ve got something around the tune of $4 billion that is still sitting in credit that will either be used or people will demand part of that money back.
“The travel agents were very convincing when they spoke about the fact that they have been working for the last 12 months for nothing.
“And they’ve also made it very clear that unless they continue to work, a lot of that $4 billion will effectively be lost.”
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