KOTA KINABALU: Sabah needs to come up with a specific action plan to be adopted by the various stakeholders as the impact of Covid-19 that we experience is different to other states in Malaysia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The action plan\nshould be studied by the various stakeholders together with the frontliners such\nas hotels, tour operators and airlines as they are the key frontline in the\npromotion of domestic tourism and other stimulus packages, associate and in\ncollaboration with SmithsGore Sabah, Christopher Chan proposed in the wake of\nCovid-19 outbreak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe action plan must have a win-win situation among all\ntourism stakeholders in the final papers and no conflict of interest on any\nside,\u201d Chan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the measure\ntaken to temporary exempt the service tax from March to August 2020, he\nbelieves this will help the hotel and restaurant to generate enough income to\nsustain their business turnover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 15 per\ndiscount for monthly electricity bills for hotels, tour agencies, airlines,\nshopping malls, convention and exhibition centres will definitely assist the\nindustry at a slowdown of the economy, he commended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For future\nbenefits among the parties concerned, he said mutual understanding is vital to resolve\nthe issue of refunding deposits for bookings made by tour operators with the hotels\nand airlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Covid-19\nwhich has now declared a pandemic by the WHO will further hit Sabah tourism\nindustry as the government has now banned tourists from Italy and Iran from coming,\nhe said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said the world\ntourism industry is feeling the adverse effect from the Covid-19 outbreak beginning\nfrom China and now spread to other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He commended\nthe Sabah Government swift efforts in banning all chartered and schedule\nflights from China and South Korea immediately to contain the spread of the\nvirus in Sabah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides that,\nhe said the action taken by the federal government to ban all cruise ships from\nlanding to Malaysian ports after the outbreak was detected inside Diamond Princes\ncruise ship in Japan has taken away another key market segment for Sabah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The response by\nthe government to contain Covid-19 has directly impacted not only the cancellations\nof hotel rooms, tour packages and airlines but also saw the tourist guides, bus\ndrivers, seafood restaurants and souvenir shops suffers an instant drop in\nbusiness whilst some have already closed down, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He cited hotels\nin Semporna and tour operators are now badly hit with only 10 per cent room occupancy\nwhilst boat and dive operators are slashing their prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no short-term\nremedy to cure the virus at the moment and it will take some time for the\nmarket to recover, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also hopes the stimulus package announced by the then interim prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad by end of February 2020 will be adopted by the newly formed Perikatan Nasional government.-HS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah needs to come up with a specific action plan to be adopted by the various stakeholders as the impact of Covid-19 that we experience is different to other states in Malaysia. The action plan should be studied by the various stakeholders together with the frontliners such as hotels, tour operators and airlines…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267,"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/holidaysabah.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}