Lion Travel Agency & Tayih Landis Hotel: What Are the Opportunities for the Resuscitation of the Tourism Industry?

Lion Travel Agency & Tayih Landis Hotel: What Are the Opportunities for the Resuscitation of the Tourism Industry?

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

May 5, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

The COVID pandemic is gradually slowing down in Taiwan; for more than three months, how to restore the hopes of the industries heavily hurt, especially the tourism and hospitality industries, will be a formidable trial. The Tayih Landis Hotel, the first five-star hotel in Tainan, recently announced that it would cease operations at the end of June; its 300 employees would be laid off. Two days later, Jason Wang, chairman of the Lion Travel Agency, the dragon head of the trade in Taiwan, candidly admitted that “Lion Travel can no longer survive”, and announced that the enterprise with more than 3,000 employees would transform into a “community for living”. The two incidents, one in the south and one in the north, explain that the state of the "disastrous" tourism industry can no longer be rescued by government bailout programs.

Whether it is Lion Travel or the Ritz Hotel, no matter how professional, senior in the trade, or self-confident, could not endure the torture of the shut-down for pandemic control. More importantly, even if the controls against the pandemic are eased, we still cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel in cross-Strait relations. Mainland tourists will not come back, and where are the Southeast Asian visitors horrified and deterred by the pandemic? Facing such prospects, who would still harbor grandiose ambitions and go all in?

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