Tourism and hospitality businesses have been hit to varying degrees by the impacts of reintroduced restrictions on movement due to the current Victorian coronavirus situation.

While the impacts are nowhere near the roughly $1m in lost income for The Barn Steakhouse from Victoria’s last lockdown, The Barn has lost dozens of bookings for the next two weeks. The Barn Steakhouse’s manager Kent Comley said this would add up to more than $15,000 in lost inventory, as a result of South Australia’s snap border closure with Victoria.

In addition, Mr Comley explained that, off the back of the announcement of border restrictions, the restaurant had experienced one of its quietest Saturday nights in some time, exacerbated by Melbourne and Victorian guests cancelling bookings.

These included guests due to stay at the facility’s rooms and dine in its restaurant. There was also a wedding, which was forced to be put on hold. “I think that it’s (the current situation in Victoria) dented confidence,” Mr Comley told The SE Voice, Mr Comley added that he hopes the COVID-19 outbreak is solved sooner rather than later.

It comes as states and territories across Australia impose travel restrictions on people who have visited coronavirus exposure sites in Greater Melbourne, with SA introducing a hard border on May 26. Essential travellers and returning South Australians – required to quarantine for 14 days – remain the only people allowed to enter SA from the affected areas.

However, the impacts on trading caused by the restrictions vary depending on the business. Lakes Resort Mount Gambier’s reservations manager Tamara Rothall told The SE Voice the business was faring well ahead of the June long weekend, despite the reintroduced restrictions.

She said that people were likely waiting to see if any further restrictions would be announced before changing their bookings. “We have not lost much,” Ms Rothall said. “There was a lot of panic last year but there’s not as much panic this year, because we can see that in how many bookings are not dropping off.”

The impact to trading at Commodore on the Park has been more severe, according to director Michael Kosch. “Through March and April, we were back at pre-COVID sales levels in both room nights and room rates and that continued through to May, but there was a noticeable negative shift … after the (border restrictions) announcement,” Mr Kosch said.

“We probably lost about 50 room nights last week.” Mr Kosch said a large part of the loss of reservations was from business travellers, with Victoria representing around 40% of the motel’s corporate sales mix. “That might be in the vicinity of $8000 a week in revenue,” he said.

The other 60% is made up of travellers from across South Australia. Mr Kosch said the introduction of hard borders usually sees bookings being immediately cancelled. “There’s no one looking to book who has to go across the border, up until the time when they can enter and return back to their home states without any quarantine implications,” he said.