The Australian Hotels Association (WA) welcomes today’s announcement by Premier Mark McGowan that WA’s hospitality venues will soon be able to increase the number of patrons in their venue to 75 per cent of their usual capacity.
AHA(WA) CEO Bradley Woods said the announced increase, which is due to start on 15 March, will be embraced by WA’s bars, pubs, restaurants, hotels and taverns who have operated under some form of capacity restrictions for almost a year.
“With just one case of community transmission over the past ten months and with mandatory contact registers now in place, WA is well placed to increase capacity limits safely and responsibly,” Mr Woods said.
“Increasing patron limits will bring WA’s hospitality venues closer to major economic recovery.”
“The increased venue capacity will impact not only on bars, pubs, restaurants and taverns but also on functions and event facilities for weddings, conferences and gala dinners.”
“Today’s announcement is the result of months of strong advocacy efforts from the AHA. We have been impressing on Government the need to allow venues to trade at a higher capacity in order to recoup losses incurred over the past year and recover strongly in 2021.”
“We commend the State Government on this common sense move – we will continue to work towards having remaining restrictions removed, particularly as the roll out of Australia’s vaccination program increases in pace.”
