Dubbo's tourism, hospitality and accommodation sectors are going to take a hit as a result of the closure of the NSW-Victorian border, Dubbo Chamber of Commerce president Matt Wright says.
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Melbourne's deteriorating COVID-19 outbreak prompted the decision announced by the premiers of the two states on Monday morning.
No one will be able to travel across the border between the two states from midnight on Tuesday without a permit.
Mr Wright said the border closure would be felt 500 kilometres away at Dubbo.
"It will affect us directly, and the timing of it is pretty disappointing, in the middle of the Victorian school holidays and obviously NSW school holidays just starting," he said.
"So we do see a fair bit of traffic from Queensland and Victoria, Dubbo's a halfway point for Melbourne and Brisbane and a lot of people travelling the Newell Highway north and south will use Dubbo as a stopover.
"And if it's not a stopover, it's a destination for them, so we do attract tourists in the school holiday periods."
The chamber president said it was a second round of COVID-19 impacts, with numbers during the Easter school holidays "substantially down".
"Unfortunately again those tourism and hospitality and accommodation type businesses, they are going to struggle as a result, there's numbers we're going to lose and patronage we're not going to capture as a result of that Victorian border closure," Mr Wright said.
Despite it being "disappointing", travellers from within NSW may still visit Dubbo, Mr Wright said.
"Hopefully we can encourage people from the eastern seaboard of NSW to venture over the Blue Mountains and further afield so they can discover what we have to offer out here," he said.
Faye Wheeler
I have been a journalist for more than a decade and in that time I have been keeping Daily Liberal readers up to date about issues affecting them and what's happening in their community. Throughout my career I have covered a range of rounds and most recently I have been focusing on the business round.
I have been a journalist for more than a decade and in that time I have been keeping Daily Liberal readers up to date about issues affecting them and what's happening in their community. Throughout my career I have covered a range of rounds and most recently I have been focusing on the business round.
