Intrepid Travel is one of the largest adventure tourism companies in the world, operating in seven continents. The company has had to let go of a third of its Australian employees, with the remaining 200 supported by JobKeeper.
Margy Osmond, chief executive of national advocacy group Tourism and Transport Forum, says the closure of international borders and domestic travel restrictions at the end of March only made it worse.
"As of May we were sitting at something like 65% down on jobs in the sector so instead of having something like 700,000 direct jobs there are only about 230,000 at the moment and that's with JobKeeper so it shows you just how desperate the situation is within our industry."
With Victoria now in stage four lockdown, there's fears the state's once-thriving tourism industry will struggle to recover.
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