FOCUS ON BUSINESS Story and Interview by NATALIE O’CONNOR
Tourism The State of Play Right Now One Shop Keeper’s Story
T
ourism holds an important role in the economic development of Australia. According to Tourism Australia, domestic and international travel spend in Australia totalled AUS$122 billion in 2018-19. Tourism was growing year on year faster than the national gross domestic product (GDP). It also totalled 5% of the workforce. However, Australia has experienced a horrendous start to 2020. There were fires which engulfed much of the country, then floods and now COVID-19—a global pandemic, closing boarders, causing sickness and death. In Australia there have been strict measures put in place to help stop the spread of the virus. This has helped “flatten the curve” of infected people, but it has meant that most of our boarders have remained closed and thus our tourism industry has taken a huge hit. To get a greater understanding of what this means, we talk with Richard Preen, Shop Manager of The Three Sisters Souvenirs and Gift Shop, to understand what businesses in the tourism industry are going through.
eYs Magazine, Spring 2020 | 20
Welcome Richard, thank you very much for agreeing to be interviewed for our magazine. Could you tell us a about your background and how you came to become the Shop Manager at the Three Sisters Souvenir & Gift shop in Katoomba? Thank you. Originally, I’m from the UK. I left there and went to Hong Kong in ‘91. I started doing bars and restaurants, ended up managing a few. Then I had the opportunity to come to Australia in 2004, whereby again, I went back into bars and restaurants. In that time, when I was working for a bar and restaurant in Echo Point Plaza, they had a bottle shop, a lolly shop, souvenir shop, a cafe and a restaurant, and I ended up managing the whole lot. Then in 2015, another company came in and took the lease over the whole building, so we had to vacate the premises, but they wanted to keep the souvenir shop going. So we found a location for the souvenir shop, which is this one now. Then a year later the owner asked me if I wanted to buy it, so I jumped at the chance and bought it.
