Skydivers could be back landing at North Wollongong Beach in the coming weeks, as the city's homegrown ASX listed adventure company looks to reopen amid easing COVID-19 travel restrictions.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The company - which runs skydiving drop zones and tourism ventures across Australia and New Zealand - announced it would suspend operations indefinitely from March 23.
A number of permanent staff were made redundant and contractors were stood down as the pandemic became "a significant and unknown quantity for the tourism industry".
But now, thanks to the successful shutdown in Australia and New Zealand, CEO John O'Sullivan said he was ready to reopen.
"We are refining the way that we operate a skydiving business in a post-COVID world, and as soon as we feel that our measures are going to be acceptable to the relevant health authorities we will be open again," he said.
"We are aiming to be operational in New Zealand late next week, which will be a limited operation with one drop zone, one aircraft in Queenstown in line with the restrictions there.
He said it would be either stage two or stage three of the government's reopening plan which would most likely allow for tandem skydiving to restart in NSW.
"We have spent a lot of time on the sanitisation measures of the aircraft, of the drop zone and ground transfer," he said.
"We will be making surgical masks mandatory for when patrons are in aircraft and doing the same with tandem masters and pilots. And our contact tracing is probably as good as any business. We have a much more advanced contact tracing system in place than most tourism operators."
While Australia's ongoing border closures will continue to affect the business for a long time, Mr O'Sullivan said he thought there would be new opportunities from domestic travellers.
"We're really excited - this is back to the future in many ways, and back to the origins of where the company started from in Wollongong. It's about targeting that hard core adventure junkie within Australia."
He said the market would be missing 9.5 million international visitors to Australia in a typical year, but noted that - on the flipside - the 10 million Australians who usually travel overseas would be looking for tourism opportunities at home.
We depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support.