According to the Malaysian Association of Hotels, the hotel and tourism industries will require more government assistance if they are to survive the extended Covid-19 pandemic.

Its president, Datuk N. Subramaniam, stated that if such assistance is not provided, hotels and stakeholders will be forced to close.

“The industry is arguably one of the most affected and has yet to show signs of recovery. It can no longer sustain itself; its survival is highly dependent on controlling the spread of Covid-19, which would allow for the relaxation of travel restrictions both domestically and eventually internationally,” he said in a statement.

Because current movement control order (MCO) deployments have proven ineffective, this can only be accomplished with a long-term plan to regulate the problem.

“The industry believes that the government should undertake stricter and more effective steps to prevent the spread as quickly as feasible, such as a total lockdown comparable to MCO 1.0.

“Limiting attendance at work and economic sector activity hours will simply increase tensions,” Subramaniam said.

He went on to say that, regardless of absolute lockdown or not, the tourism and hotel industries will not survive as long as travel restrictions exist and both internal and international borders remain closed.

“This is a fact that the administration can no longer ignore. The lives of 3.6 million people employed in the sector, or at least what is left of it, are on the line.

“Despite the limited window of domestic tourism between June and September 2020,” he said, “the industry has lost over 80% of its business since March 18.”

According to Subramaniam, the hotel industry alone lost around RM6.53 billion in 2020, with an estimated RM300 million loss for every two weeks of the MCO.

“To now, the hotel industry's revenue loss in 2021 has easily topped RM5 billion, making it worse than last year,” he said.