What would normally be the busiest week of the year on the ski slopes has been disrupted by the coronavirus crisis.
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As the school holidays start, hotel operators in Thredbo said they were well down on bookings.
Some reported that potential guests were calling to make sure nobody from COVID-19-hit Melbourne was also staying.
"We should have been booked out for next week four months ago," John Leggett of the Candlelight Lodge said. Instead, the hotel was at 80 per cent occupancy for the coming holiday week.
"It's normally the most demanding week in the year. It's the week when everyone says 'jump' and we say 'how high?' But this year we have reduced rates and it's still not full."
The president of the Thredbo Chamber of Commerce, Steve Owen, said "visitation is good under the circumstances" - but the circumstances were difficult.
"There's certainly enough concern about people coming from Victoria to worry about," he said.
He has a restaurant in the town. If Melburnians came in he said he would ask them where they had been, just to check they hadn't come from the city's COVID-19 hotspots. "We would need to ask a few questions," he said.
Businesses are operating under the COVID-19 restrictions but Mr Owen feared some visitors felt a bit more lax about the distancing rules just because they were on holiday.
We are all conscious that we are operating in a covid environment but we are praying for more snow.
- Thredbo hotelier
Other businesses said the lack of snow was a problem. There was a fall on Thursday night but "it wasn't enough", the owner of a small boutique hotel said.
"The village is always on tenterhooks when there's no snow," he said.
"We are all conscious that we are operating in a COVID environment but we are praying for more snow."
He operated a small, four-bedroom upmarket hotel. To cope with the coronavirus restrictions, breakfasts were arranged so only people from two of the bedrooms were allowed to sit and eat at a time, each group at the far end of a table.
Another hotelier who didn't want to be named for fear of offending the resort on which she depends said she was between a quarter and a third down on bookings. Coronavirus was a big deterrent. "People have been asking 'have we got anyone coming from Melbourne'," the hotelier said.
The establishments which haven't opened in Thredbo are often the private lodges, which are jointly owned by a group of skiers. They tend to be smaller properties with bedrooms and perhaps a kitchen but coronavirus hygiene and distancing was difficult in them.
There is some irritation in Thredbo with the ski resort. Hoteliers pay the resort a fee per bed in their hotel. Some said that potential visitors found it hard to get ski passes on the resort website and that meant they then cancelled their hotel bookings.
The resort didn't respond to a request for information.
As for the skiing, some slopes were open.
But a string of activities were ruled out. It listed them as:
- Group lessons
- Thredboland and childcare services
- Thredbo seasonal programs and race training
- Terrain parks
- NASTAR course (racing around poles)
- Guided mountain tours
- Night skiing and flare runs
- School holidays activities