PETALING JAYA: Although international borders are now open and many restrictions have been lifted, the Malaysian Association of Hotels (MAH) said the sector has not fully returned to normal due to a labour shortage.
Its president Christina Toh told theSun the hotel industry’s future is still uncertain, as many employees have refused to return to work, anticipating another lockdown to hit the country.
Toh said the industry has been hampered in serving customers efficiently due to a limited workforce that is unable to meet the demands of rising hotel occupancy rates.
However, she said some hotel guests understand the circumstances and are patient, despite having the right to good and speedy service since they are also paying a service charge in addition to the room rates.
“If you are talking about how bad it is ... well, the travel and hospitality industry was the first to be impacted by the Covid-19 lockdowns.
“We were quite dependent on foreign contract workers before the pandemic. But during the pandemic, most of them returned to their home countries.
“It’s bad when you take in more reservations but can’t handle the workload as the current hotel occupancy rate is good. When staff cannot provide efficient services, guests will complain and say: ‘If you can’t cope, don’t open’. But some understand our predicament,” she said.
“When hotels reopened, many staff, including room attendants and food and beverage staff, were just scared to come back to work, believing there would be another lockdown and they would lose their jobs again.”
She also said MAH had approached the government through the ministries of Tourism, Arts, and Culture and Human Resources to allow foreign contract workers to return by approving their visas, but the matter is still pending.
Malaysian Association of Tour and Agents (Matta) honorary treasurer and spokesman Nigel Wong agreed that the shift of many hospitality sector employees to other industries during the shutdown period was a major factor behind the labour shortage.
He suggested the authorities come up with possible solutions to strengthen people’s confidence to restore demand for domestic tourism.
“There isn’t any quick-fix solution to this problem. First, we need to quickly rebuild confidence in the tourism industry, which is something the government needs to put more funding and attention into.
“This will be an instant contributor to the economy and help woo talent back to tourism businesses,” he added.
“We hire a wide range of people with specific skills that often take years of on-the-job training to acquire.
“Like many other industries, these professionals moved on to other jobs during the lockdown. Many are not keen to return to tourism, given that the industry in Malaysia hasn’t fully recovered.
“Secondly, we need to modernise our tourism industry and focus on developing more talent and professionals.”
