A vital lesson learned from Covid-19 situation is the need for multistakeholder collaboration in travel and tourism.
This emergency situation has compelled the business organizations, public institutions and others of this industry to lend a helping hand to the destination, on national and international level.
Bringing together all the non-traditional entities like health agencies has become the need of the hour. All these need evidence-based information.
The pandemic has disclosed the worldwide significance of travel industry in relation to economics and interconnectedness with other industries.
Extraordinary steps were taken to stop the spread of the virus like lockdown, movement control orders, border closedown and social distancing impacting tourism and hospitality business activities from small tour operators to multinational hotel chains and major airlines.
Before the Covid-19 challenge, Malaysia developed an ambitious target that was set to attract 30 million visitors in 2020 (26.1 million in 2019). This was close to RM100bil in tourism receipts through the Visit Malaysia 2020 tourism campaign. However, the health crisis of pandemic ruined the 2020 target relentlessly.
By end of the last year, the number of tourist arrivals dropped by 68.2% from 2019 same period to 4.25 million. Tourist expenditure dropped sharply to RM12.5bil, or 69.8% on annual basis. Per capita expenditure dropped by 5.3% to RM2,956.10 on annual basis in the first half of 2020.
Tags: Tourism Bank
