KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 18 — Malaysian tourism operators say it’s difficult for the industry to bounce back from the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic without more foreign travellers.

Wayne Tarman the Director of Sales and Research at Borneo Adventure Sdn Bhd in Sarawak explained that their business relied on the inflow of international tourists and lamented the fact the government was slow to reopen the country’s borders.

"Our business relies on international tourism. We essentially had zero revenue for two years due to lockdowns and extended border closure... If the borders had opened in January instead of April we would be back to pre-Covid revenue levels.”

While he acknowledged that the company managed to weather the pandemic with government aid, however, he noted that more could have been done to help the industry mitigate the loss of revenue caused by the pandemic.

"The most significant government assistance was the Federal Government’s wage subsidy programme. This helped us to offset some staff costs... The time for greater assistance was in 2020 and 2021 when the tourism industry was in a really bad way.”

He also expects a slow, uphill climb for the company to fully recover.

"Recovery of business-to-business sales from our overseas agents has been slower. This is around 40% of pre-Covid levels. Overall our total sales now are around 50% of pre-covid levels. We only expect recovery to pre-covid sales levels in 2024.”

According to figures provided by the Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry (Motac), tourist arrivals dropped by 96.9% to 134,728 in 2021 compared to the arrival of 4.33 million tourists a year prior.

The National Recovery Council (NRC) had previously suggested that the government reopen the country’s international borders as early as October 2021 to allow for the recovery of the nation’s tourism sector.

Sara Shera who operates a family-run travel service on Pulau Perhentian, Terengganu revealed that the business has been struggling without foreign tourists.

"We applied for GPK (Prihatin Special Grant). We mostly used it to cover our living expenses and operating costs because there weren’t any or that many tourists on the islands... Compared to before the pandemic, business has been slow. Partly because we don’t see any tourists from China because of their lockdowns.”

She explained that their business only managed to survive with domestic tourism following the end of the Covid-19 lockdowns across the country and the subsequent reopening of the country’s international borders.

"During the first MCO, it was definitely tough. Because of the travel restrictions, business not only dried up because there were no tourists, but when SOPs eased up, business slowly started to pick up, mainly with local tourists at first before the border reopened and foreign tourists started coming. We mostly get a lot of locals and some Mat Salleh, mostly Europeans from France and Germany.”

Motac targets to welcome 4.5 million international tourist arrivals following the reopening of the borders in April 2022.

NRC had also advised Motac to enhance government initiatives and improve the country’s infrastructure in order to better facilitate the industry’s recovery.