The Bhutanese Leading the way.
While the COVID pandemic hit all business entities among the worst hit were hotels and restaurants.
The new strategic measures from the government which aims at economic revival through doing away with lockdown and restrictions based on herd immunity seems to promise a glimmer of hope to these affected businesses, but in reality the problem is far from over and the situation still looks bleak, at least according to owners of various hotels and restaurants and the Chairman of Hotel and Restaurant association of Bhutan.
The owner of a pizza café in Thimphu said, “We had to borrow money from our relatives and friends just so we could pay our rents and put food on the table. Our business had been closed from January till now and it opened briefly in February for about five days. For months we hardly sold anything and even now it’s difficult to see a customer or two due to fear of COVID in spite of the thromde office operating at 25 percent capacity. We live in Khasadrapchu and to come to the café (which is located below thromde) and applying for movement pass and waiting for it to get approved for a few days is proving to be quite a headache in addition to the already suffering business.”
She further said, “Even if the lockdown completely lifts, it’s going to be a while before we can recover our losses from borrowed money, loans and rents and even now we are going to have to avail some more loans just to keep our café running and cover the slump from previous months.”
“For a grocery shop like ours which was allowed to operate during the lockdown it may seem as though the business was not affected at all and there is some truth to that but it’s not that simple. The pandemic has disrupted the supply chain of the market and our difficulties lay mostly in procuring the goods from our agents; it sometimes took days for our goods to arrive and when it did, we had to sell whatever the authorized and prescribed dealer brought us. As a result, we had abundance of items that were not wanted by the customers and scarcity of items that were actually in demand,” said the owner of Breedee grocery shop in Thimphu.
The owner of SDK restaurant in Thimphu who hasn’t sold a single thing for months after the lockdown was implemented said, “It hasn’t been long since we bought this restaurant thinking we could make some good profit but that’s when this whole COVID business happened and now here we are worrying about how we could even be making a few hundred ngultrums a day. To make matters worse, after this building was declared a red building, I have forsaken all hopes of making profit, now I am stuck with the dilemma of never-ending rents for both the shop and my residence and of making a living just to feed my family.”
Sonam Wangchuk, the Chairman of HRAB said, “Severe is the only way to describe how the hotels and restaurants have been affected. How they managed to cope with it has mostly to do with the logistical arrangement. For those hotels which were used as quarantine centers by the government, they didn’t suffer as much but for others which relied on domestic travelers, meetings and conferences, etc. their business has been zero because during lockdown there was no business at all.”
The chairman added that some business entities have not even enrolled their staffs on Kidu.
As for the economic way forward, the situation is yet to reveal itself, but according to the chairman, at least for a year or two or at least until the tourism revives, there is no chance to recoup the losses since almost all hotels are dependent on the tourists.
“And when I say tourists, I don’t mean 100 or 200; I mean huge substantial numbers in order to recoup the losses incurred in years. Just because there will no longer be lockdowns, that doesn’t mean the economic situation of hotels will improve. Around 70-80 percent of hotels are running in containment mode and now that local travelers traveling from high risk to low risk areas are allowed to be home quarantined, international arrivals is the only way the hotels will ever hope to recover from their losses. Unless the tourism situation improves, there is no chance for hotels, that much is certain. For things to bounce back to the way they were before 2019, it’s going to take at least a few years I think,” the chairman said.
The Chairman feels the situation will all depend on the policy makers and how the tourism sector plays out in coming days.
