IN June, the family behind the Telang Usan Hotel in Kuching, contemplated the unthinkable – to pack up and shutter the hotel they had spent 31 years building up.

The Covid-19 pandemic in Sarawak was only in its fourth month but the travel restrictions in place to stop the spread of infections had crippled the travel and tour industry to the extent that keeping the 66-room hotel and its 21 employees looked bleak.

For a small, three-star hotel that was enjoying an occupancy rate of between 60% and 70% before the pandemic, a plunge to between 18% and 22% pushed it into the red with a serious cash-flow problem.

“It was a difficult time. We needed 32% occupancy to break even,” said general manager Audrey Wan Ullok.

Now, with the third wave of the pandemic sweeping the country and as cases spike globally, Audrey said the hotel’s dark days are not coming to an end any time soon.

But what has surprised her was the staff’s fierce loyalty and willingness to shoulder part of their employer’s burden to find a solution, agreeing to pay cuts and coming up with strategies to save the hotel.

“I was so encouraged by their determination and loyalty. Many of them have been with us for more than 15 years.

“They stayed positive despite the challenges,” said Audrey.

Visitor arrivals to Sarawak reached 730,944 in January and February, before the onset of the pandemic, according to statistics from the state’s Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry.

In Sarawak, infections arrived in March and by the end of that month, the number of visitor arrivals plunged to 173,199.

In April, when positive cases detected daily numbered in the high 20s, there were still 10,081 arrivals. Visitor arrivals were 6,732 in May and 30,300 in June, as Sarawak began to contain the outbreak within the state.

But there was a spike in early July and tighter travel restrictions were put in place.

This included banning locals from the peninsula, Labuan and Sabah, causing arrivals to plunge to a mere 2,655 that month.

The dwindling arrivals pushed Telang Usan Hotel to the brink, and Audrey was prepared to let go of staff.

She did not count on them to stay and fight, not just for their jobs, but to keep the hotel open.

Staff sat down with the management to rethink and re-strategise.

“There were no layoffs. We decided we would have to rebrand to sell ourselves.”

The first thing they did was to undertake a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis.

“We found our niche to be our ethnic Kenyah culture and Dayak food.

“We have started promoting ourselves quite a lot on social media,” Audrey said.

Apart from the front office manager who opted to retire, the staff even agreed to take a 10% pay cut.

Audrey said the government’s stimulus package to assist small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to weather the economic storm was a lifeline, which helped meet the salary bill.

“The wage subsidy through Socso, which we applied for, also helped.”

Since promotions to the international market are out of the question because of border closures, the hotel decided to introduce the “Sia Sitok” tour package aimed at locals, since intra-state travel is allowed with police permission.

“Sia sitok” in Sarawak Malay means “here and there”.

The programme is a collaboration between the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) and the Sarawak Tourism Federation (STF), which Audrey chairs.

All tours offered under this package have been discounted up to 50% nett.

“We now depend on domestic tourism to sustain and keep agents and hoteliers alive.

“The industry and tourism players have had to think out of the box and come up with new and innovative ways to promote tourism to the Sarawak market.”

Audrey does not expect any international arrivals until late next year, not even before the last quarter of 2021.

The Sia Sitok package’s second phase, aimed at travellers in other states, is also put on ice, as Sarawak requires mandatory quarantine of 14 days for those arriving from other parts of Malaysia.

Malaysian Hotels Association (MAH) Sarawak chapter chairman Ibrahim Nordin said he knows of two budget hotels in Kuching, which have been forced to shut down due to poor business.

While bigger resorts and four and five-star city hotels enjoy better business at more than 50% by functioning as quarantine hotels, it is the smaller hotels that are struggling to survive, he said.

Nordin said it would take a year or two for smaller hotels to be able to make a turnaround in business and finances from the day international borders are open and foreign tourists are allowed back.

“There just isn’t enough business generated from domestic intra-state travel to keep the industry going.”

Despite Nordin’s bleak assessment, Telang Usan Hotel will hang on for as long as it can, for which Audrey is grateful.

The hotel was started by her businessman father, Stephen Wan Ullok, who first built it as a shophouse but converted it to a budget hotel after finding it difficult to lease. – November 2, 2020.