Souvenir shops, hotels hit by coronavirus scare
Published on: Thursday, January 30, 2020
By: Ottey Peter and Anthea Peter
KOTA KINABALU: Certain sectors in the State have begun feeling the burden of the Chinese tourist cancellations to Sabah, a random Daily Express survey showed.
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This follows the Chinese Government’s ban on Wuhan and Hubei citizens traveling abroad in the wake of the Coronavirus epidemic as well as AirAsia’s decision to stop all KK-Wuhan flights till Feb. 29.
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Among the affected businesses include hotels and souvenir shops. Borneo Recipe, Sabah’s largest one-stop souvenir and native brand store, experienced a sharp decrease in customer traffic at its branch in Suria Sabah Shopping Mall immediately after the ban took effect.
According to its supervisor, Chong, in his 40’s, the store lost about 60 to 70 per cent of customer traffic despite the Chinese New Year (CNY) festivities which is supposedly the store’s peak period of sales performance every year.
“Even on the first day of CNY, we couldn’t see the crowd. If we compare it to previous years, the crowd is smaller by at least 60 to 70 per cent.
“For this branch, our customers are mainly from China. In a year, they account for 80-90 per cent of our customers. Koreans and others are just a minority,” he told Daily Express.
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Chong said the store’s sales performance had declined drastically. “During Chinese New Year, we can make RM13,000 to RM15,000 in one day. But now we can only make RM6,000-RM7,000 and even that is very hard to achieve,” he said.
Chong said Chinese tourists have a much higher purchasing power compared to tourists of other nationalities, as the Chinese also have a deeply ingrained culture of buying gifts and souvenirs from places they travel to. A hotel in Putatan whose main market is China tourists is experiencing a 30 per cent room occupancy rate.
The hotel representative said the ban had significantly affected their business.
“Our hotel occupancy rate is usually about 60 to 70 per cent during this time of the year but due to the ban, we experienced an immediate impact. Most of guests are from China so we lost a lot,” he said.
However, certain hotels were only impacted slightly.
A resort representative said the establishment experienced a slight drop in room occupancy by Chinese tourists between Jan 24 until early February.
“We do have some cancellations but it does not affect that much on our business,” she said.
In another four-star hotel at the city centre, a spokesperson said ban had barely affected their business as they only experienced about 5 to 10 per cent drop in room occupancy rate.
She said they are still getting guests from China to come and stay at the hotel despite the outbreak.
“Chinese guests make up about 50 per cent in our hotel and only a few have cancelled their bookings. We are still welcoming them to stay here,” she said.
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