AUSTRALASIA. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden today announced a two-month suspension of the trans-Tasman ‘travel bubble’ with Australia amid a concerning rise in COVID-19 cases. The move takes effect tonight (Friday), with managed flights over the week ahead to allow citizens to return.
Travellers have been able to move quarantine-free between the two countries from 19 April, a move greeted as a major step towards industry recovery by airports and the travel retail community at the time.
There have been several shutdowns related to outbreaks in Australian states over recent months and the bubble was already paused with New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. Ardern said this covered around half of all travellers coming to New Zealand from Australia even before this latest move.
Ardern said the decision was made as the government adapts to the “ever-changing nature of COVID-19”, led recently by the Delta variant.
“Since we set up quarantine-free travel with Australia, more than 200,000 people have flown between our two countries. The Delta variant has materially changed the risk profile. COVID has changed, and so we must too.”
Ardern said the move to stop quarantine-free travel from Australia would be in place for “at least the next eight weeks”, when it will be reassessed.
“We’ve acted out of an abundance of caution and will continue to do so,” she added. “My strong message to every New Zealander in Australia right now who does not want to stay there long term is – come home.”
The stop-start nature of the travel recovery and its impact on Australia-New Zealand travel retail are captured in a series of articles by Ivo Favotto of The Mercurius Group.
In the latest, published on 9 July, he reflected on further setbacks to the pace of travel retail reopening in Australasian airports in the face of the latest COVID-19 developments.
He noted that “Australia and New Zealand’s travel retail recovery is being held hostage to the impact of rolling state lockdowns in Australia and their impact on the trans-Tasman travel bubble, as well as to the slow vaccine roll-outs in both countries”.
In June, some 60% of travel retail and dining outlets at Australasian airports were open, compared to 64% a month earlier.
