Over the past three decades, millions of Chinese travellers have...

Over the past three decades, millions of Chinese travellers have dined at Harry Sou's restaurants during trips of a lifetime to see the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree rainforest.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down international travel – the lifeblood of Far North Queensland's economy – almost overnight, forcing Mr Sou to close multiple eateries and drastically restructure his business.

While international travel has begun to slowly resume, Australia remains almost entirely closed off to China, its largest inbound market pre-pandemic, which has maintained strict quarantine requirements for inbound arrivals and is only beginning to ease its domestic COVID-19 restrictions with cases starting to surge.

Visitation from China is 95 per cent below pre-pandemic levels, with the latest visitor survey recording just 62,120 arrivals from the country in the year to September.

"Right now, we're still a long way before we get back to where we were," Mr Sou said.