Hotel industry gives guarded welcome to Canberra repatriation flights

Hoteliers would need to know, though, that turning their place into a quarantine hotel would not jeopardise the ACT coming out of COVID-19 restrictions, as happened in Victoria.

This would mean help from the authorities, particularly in terms of policing.

"If the industry was assured that accepting quarantine arrivals would not affect any easing of the ACT's coronavirus restrictions, and that sufficient government resources would be devoted to ensuring the integrity of the quarantine programme, then we have no reservations about a hotel choosing to become an exclusively-quarantine hotel," Anthony Brierley, head of the Australian Hotels Association in the ACT, said.

In June, two Canberra hotels were used to quarantine 300 incoming Australians who had been trapped abroad.

The Nepal Airlines flight was met by Australian Federal Police, Border Force and health officials in face masks and gloves.

But people in the industry say that since then the rules have changed so that hotels would not be able to have other non-quarantined guests at the same time.

This means hotels would have to make a choice, with the quarantining guests offering an uncertain revenue. Other future guests would have to have their bookings cancelled.

There would also be the question of whether ACT Policing had adequate resources to ensure that there was no "leak" of an infection from the quarantine hotel.

In Victoria, the virus was let back into the community by lax security at quarantine hotels.

There would also be the question of whether quarantine hotels in the ACT would take medical resources from other parts of the territory.

In the early stages of the pandemic, the federal government set up quarantine centres on Christmas Island and at Howard Springs in the Northern Territory.

Medical staff were drawn from all over Australia but these specialists are now in demand nearer home.