The Victorian Government's regional travel voucher scheme website has crashed due to the large number of would-be holidaymakers trying to apply for the $200 discount.
The vouchers were announced in a bid to inject more life into the regional Victorian tourism industry, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
But at 10:00am, the time the first 40,000 vouchers were supposed to be released, the Business Victoria website displayed an internal server error message for many users.
Those who did manage to make it onto the website were unable to find the "apply now" button to register for the scheme for almost an hour.
A further error message was found once the applications opened, informing users the Government's Salesforce servers were "temporarily unable to respond".
Business Victoria said the page went offline due to "heavy demand".
The application button was removed "to allow people engaged in registering for the scheme to complete this process", a spokesperson said.
"Business Victoria is continuing to work to resolve issues and apologises for the inconvenience."
For those who battled through the website issues to successfully get a voucher, the first 40,000 vouchers can be used for travel between December 12 and January 22.
They can be redeemed after people travel to regional Victoria, and spend at least $400 on accommodation, experiences or tours.
Shadow Minister for Regional Cities Cindy McLeish said the website crash was "another spectacular flop" from the State Government.
"Of course as always, they've stuffed it up a beauty this time," she said.
"Industry insiders have told us that 600,000 transactions should have been able to be done per minute — well that didn't happen, because we saw seconds after, minutes after it went live today, the voucher system failed.
"This sort of thing happens way too often. A complete flop by an ill-prepared government."
Tourism Minister Martin Pakula yesterday said he expected there would be a very high demand for the vouchers, which were set to be issued on a first come, first served basis.
"For this first tranche, I would expect demand to outstrip supply. That's been the experience in other parts of the country," he said on Thursday.
"We've tried to be generous but 40,000 is the limit for the first tranche and each tranche."
The vouchers are limited to one per household, and travellers will be required to spend at least two nights in paid accommodation in regional Victoria.
People can apply for the vouchers even if they've already booked their accommodation.
Travel to the Mornington Peninsula and the Yarra Valley is eligible to be redeemed, even though parts of those areas were included in metropolitan Melbourne during the stage 4 lockdown.
