Bahrain tourism firms face huge challenges: survey
MANAMA, June 21, 2020
Bahrain's travel and tourism sector has emerged as the worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, with a majority of tourism and hospitality players seeing major challenges in keeping the businesses running if the situation continues, according to a recent survey.
About 71 per cent of the country's travel and tourism sector business owners see risk to their businesses within the year if the situation continues, with 55 per cent of the owners not expecting their cash flow to maintain their operations for more than one month, the survey by Bahrain Chamber has revealed.
The partial closure of businesses, flight and visa restrictions and, most importantly, the closure of the King Fahad Causeway since March 8, has put a severe strain on the country's tourism sector and continues to do so with the ongoing Covid-19 crisis.
According to the survey, 52 per cent of business owners from the tourism and hospitality sector expect to layoff more than 20 of their employees during the upcoming period.
The estimates also revealed that 56 per cent of business owners in the travel and hospitality sector expect a significant decrease in revenue during the upcoming period.
The hope is that the hospitality sector should bounce back by September, although a full recovery was not expected until next year, a report in sister publication Gulf Daily News said.
“I think it will start picking up slowly by September as we are already seeing countries like Greece and others opening up for tourism,” said Hospitality and Tourism committee chairman at the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Jehad Amin. - TradeArabia News Service
