SARAWAK’s Covid-19 battered tour and travel industry players are not exactly jumping for joy with news that the country’s borders would be reopened on April 1 to welcome foreign tourists.

“Nobody is rushing to get back to business,” said the Sarawak chapter of the Malaysian Association of Tour & Travel Agents (Matta) chairman Choo Chon Foong.

Choo said the pandemic had not only battered them as travel agents, it had nearly decimated them.

“Most of us are left only with the licence to be travel agents. Where business is concerned, we are back to square one,” he said.

“We have to restart all over again. We have no workers, no assets, a wrecked business network, both domestically and internationally, and we are very low on capital.

“Now you know why we’re not rushing. We have absolutely no idea of what to expect when the border reopens. Absolutely no idea,” Choo told The Malaysian Insight.

He said as of March 25, 20% of the 150 members in the Matta Sarawak chapter have not even renewed their licence, adding that a handful would not be around to see the border reopened for they have shut for good.

Choo said those who had managed to survive have no workers because they had to let them go when the tourists stopped coming.

They then started asset stripping, selling off their vans and coaches to service monthly loan repayments to stay afloat.

Choo said the new minimum wage of RM1, 500 that is coming into force in May has also put a damper on their reopening plans.

“It’s not kind to recovering industries like us,” he said.

The new minimum wage, he said, had put Sarawak’s tour and travel companies in a quandary as they were not in the financial position to re-employ their laid off staff or employ new ones.

But the stark truth, Choo said, is that the industry is aware it cannot get back to the pre-pandemic level in the short term.

In 2019 before the pandemic, visitor arrivals to the state was 4.7 million. Last year, at the height of the pandemic, the arrivals plunged to 235,000.

Choo said it could take up to two years for the industry to get back to where it once was.

“Conservatively, one year the minimum, two years the max. I think some of us might not be around in a year’s time. One year is a long time.”

He said the lukewarm optimism is due to the ongoing Russia–Ukraine war which is impacting the European market.

“It is going to make travel expensive. Airlines flying from Europe to Asia have to skirt Ukraine and Russian air space. That will make travel more expensive,” he said alluding to reports that some routes are now longer by more than three hours.

Expensive fares are not the only extra costs travellers could face, he said, pointing to health protocols and standard operating procedures (SOP) of different countries which could push travel costs further.

As fears of Covid-19 lingers, Choo said the travel pattern would likely change.

“We’re not likely to get large groups any more.”

Choo also said nearly all agents have “not heard of any bookings from the other side”.

The state’s tourist guides are uncertain of what lies ahead when the travel restrictions are lifted.

Sarawak Tourist Guides Association chairman Abang Azahari Zaidan said the state currently has 190 licensed tourist guides but was quick to admit he is unsure how many of them would return to the tourism industry after finding more stable and reportedly lucrative income as food delivery riders in the gig industry.

“It’s understandable they had to find alternative jobs to survive and feed their families. But I have told them not to discard their licence and they could do guiding part-time as a side income,” Abang Azahari said.

He said it had cost them RM7,000 to get the licence.

Many had taken up the training course before the pandemic only to find the borders had closed when they got their licence.

Abang Azahari said with tourists coming in small “family groups” means there could be an opportunity for the guides.

The large group incentive tours (GIT) would be a thing of the past, he added.

“April 1 is the day we have been waiting for. I’ve been told Singaporeans are just itching to get out.”

He said with so many restrictions and health protocols still in place in many countries, he does not think Singaporeans will want to travel very far.

The numbers before the pandemic showed an increasing number of Singaporeans are coming as tourists.

The Immigration Department of Sarawak statistics showed that between 2015 and 2019, before the pandemic, the average growth of visitors from Singapore to Sarawak was 2.38%

In 2016, 40,209 Singapore folk visited Sarawak while in 2017, the number rose by 4.89% to 42,177.

In 2018, the number went up by 3.69% to 43,734 and in 2019, 46,812 Singapore tourists visited the state.

Abang Azahari said even though international tourists may return in smaller numbers, domestic tourists from the peninsula will still keep them busy.

“We have been getting groups from Selangor and Kelantan when restrictions on domestic travel were lifted,” he added. – March 27, 2022.