Businesses are worried they will not be able to make it through winter as tourists desert the bushfire-hit Victorian surf coast during peak season.
Holiday towns along the Great Ocean Road are set to lose $50 million in tourism earnings unless holiday-makers decide to come back for what is the area's busiest time of the year.
Great Ocean Road Regional Tourism chairman Wayne Kayler-Thomson says the Christmas Day bushfire that razed 116 homes in Wye River and Separation Creek and threatened Lorne has significantly affected the area's most profitable time of the year.
"To put it in context, the Great Ocean Road region is the most visited outside Melbourne," he told AAP on Monday.
"All these businesses rely on this time of year to carry them through the rest of the year."
Wye Beach Hotel manager Angus Greene said he needed summer business to pay back the supplies he purchases over winter.
"Over the winter months we lose money, and this is the time we pay it back," he told AAP.
He has had to let go most of the additional staff hired over summer to help with increased demand.
"Our staff balloons out to 40 from about 10 every summer, but we've had to cut back now.
"I'm worried we may be left in the lurch once the season gets going, because those extra staff are usually university and high school students, and they may have already found work elsewhere," he said.
Business in Apollo Bay has been hit because it lies west of the closures on the Great Ocean, cutting it off from the most direct route from Melbourne.
Apollo Bay Chamber of Commerce secretary Jo Birley urged holiday makers to take the inland route to the town.
"Apollo Bay hasn't been affected; people just have to take an alternate route through an unaffected part of the Otways to get here, which is quite beautiful," Ms Birley said.
Pubs that usually pre-book up to 200 meals per day from tourists are standing empty, and shops are being forced to lay off casual workers hired specifically for the post-Boxing Day tourist influx.
"These are days businesses can turn over $10,000 to $15,000, so they've put on extra staff," Ms Birley told AAP.
"They've been prepared for massive numbers so they're losing most of their money in wages."
