TOMMY Tan has been managing tour groups from mainland China to Malaysia for the past 15 years but this year, he has been forced to take a break from the job.

When the stream of foreign inbound tourists was reduced to a trickle due to the worldwide coronavirus outbreak, Tan turned sales promoter.

But even that revenue stream dried up as companies and the government cancelled mass gatherings.

Tan’s story is a familiar one to the hundreds of Malaysian tour guides now struggling to make ends meet after the industry was decimated by Covid-19.

“Since Chinese New Year, there has been no tour group and no jobs,” Tan told The Malaysian Insight.

“Occasionally, I am a salesman at a trade fair, such as a furniture exhibition,” said Tan, adding that even these jobs are hard to come by now as such events were being scrapped or postponed.

Tan, however, is optimistic that the industry will recover by the middle of the year.

“If the Chinese can start to travel, it will maybe in July. Before this, you could bring a local group to Hatyai, Thailand, to pray at the Erawan Shrine. But now there is zero interest.”

Tan is not giving up on the industry and is focused on making it through the tough year so that he can reap the benefits when the market recovers in 2021.

The Malaysia United Tourist Guides Association (Mutga) also expected Chinese tourists to only return next year.

“We have no hope of a recovery in the tourism market this year, especially for Chinese tour groups,” said Mutga deputy chairman Lim Bam Soon.

“Even if the epidemic situation in China improves at year-end, the Chinese government has encouraged domestic tourism to stimulate the country;s economy so their citizens will not go abroad.”

Following cancellations by many Chinese tour groups, local tour guides are now unemployed.

“Many tour guides have applied to the bank to extend the repayment of their loans for six months,” Lim said.

“We hope that the RM600 payment announced in the economic stimulus package for those directly affected can be paid out as soon as possible.”

Lim said the association helped out its members by posting job opportunities in other sectors on its WeChat group.

Local tourists, he said, are not filling the vacuum left by foreign tourists.

“Even selling an overnight trip to Malacca or the Sky Mirror tour package in Kuala Selangor is a problem,” said Lim, who runs his own travel agency.

“We also have some guides who are in the homestay business. Some 90% of accommodation bookings have been cancelled since March, and there are zero bookings after April.

“As the outbreak in Malaysia gets worse, domestic groups have not booked, and scattered Taiwan and Vietnam groups have also ended their trips before the end of the month.”

Tan Wei Siong has been a tour guide industry for more than six years. He caters to Chinese, Taiwanese and Hong Kong travellers.

“I haven’t picked up a group for about two months. Local tourists go to these sites by themselves. They don’t need a guide.

“My wife is also a tour guide, but she focuses on other language markets. There are one or two Vietnamese tours this month but no new ones after March.”

To make ends meet, he drives a food truck selling chau tau foo (stinky tofu).

He started the business before the Covid-19 outbreak to supplement his earnings but it is now his primary source of income.

But business has also been bad because customers stay away out of fear of the pandemic. He also has to evade enforcement authorities.

Another guide, Amanda Tang, has started selling clothes, bags and sports shoes online.

“The store is run by me and two tour guide friends. After the outbreak, we did not have an income and it is not easy to find a job because many other industries are not recruiting.

“Since we didn’t have start-up funds, we started a low-cost online shop for which we don’t need to pay rent or utility bills,” Tang told The Malaysian Insight.

Her income from the business is a fraction of what she earned as a tour guide and is only enough to pay her bills

“This is just temporary. I still hope that the epidemic will pass as soon as possible, and then I can continue to be a tour guide.” – March 17, 2020.