60-70 Percent Tourism Businesses No Longer Operational: MCT Survey

Additional 15 Percent of Operators Halts Operations since January 2022 COVID Outbreak

BY ALEX DADAMU

A survey recently conducted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT) from March 4 to March 11, 2022, titled, ‘COVID Preparedness in the Tourism Sector’ has found that after two years of travel restrictions, it is estimated that 60-70 % of Tourism businesses in Solomon Islands are no longer operational.

According to the Tourism Ministry, they have cultivated a database for tourism operators from 2019 which contains approximately 300 tourism operators.

“100 tourism operators participated in the survey. This represents an estimated 80 % of tourism operators that are still in business,” The Survey stated.

It also noted the obvious that since March 2020 no tourists have entered the country, and business travel has been strictly limited to a small number of essential staff.

“This has devastated the tourism sector with the majority of tourism staff losing their jobs and many operators going out of businesses.”

MCT Survey

The survey also noted that it is likely that the number of non-operational tourism businesses is much higher since most of those would not have been participating in the survey.

“Since the outbreak of community transmission (January 2022) an additional 15 % of operators halted operations.”

It was found that a large number of tourism staff and owners that are still employed by Tourism Businesses are on heavily reduced hours and/or salaries.

“In many cases, tourism staff and managers are not getting paid at all, but work for food and lodging.

“The main employers are the large hotels and key operators focusing on international tourists and business travellers. It is in this category that most jobs have been lost.

“Many smaller operations are family-owned, and the staff are often family members or casual. While they have not had to lay off staff they have suffered financially from loss of business,” The MCT Survey noted.

With regards to vaccination rates, among tourism business owners and managers, 87 percent of them are fully vaccinated, 6 percent partly vaccinated and 7 percent represents those who have not taken any Jabs.

The survey also observed that the vaccine rate data among key operators – owners and managers are even higher.

“88 percent Fully Vaccinated, 10 percent partly vaccinated and 2 percent have not taken any Jabs.”

Meanwhile, the overall data for tourism staff who are fully Vaccinated is around 70 percent.