Taiwan Hospitality 1H/2021

The Panademic Hits the Travel Industry

Since COVID-19 started to spread globally, 14-day quarantine and the closure of borders and airports has had a huge impact on Taiwan’s tourism industry. Annual inbound tourist numbers in 2020 dropped by 88% YoY to 1.37 million and a wide range of businesses have been hit including airlines, travel agencies, duty free shops and tourist bus companies. Even though the government has announced support schemes, the closure of companies and widespread layoffs have been unavoidable in the hotel and travel agency industries.

As the pandemic was contained in the second half of 2020, the government rolled out several stimulus plans to boost domestictourism, including a NT$8 billion subsidy to hotel and travel firms and ‘stimulus vouchers’ with a total value of NT$51.1 billion. Tourist attractions and hotels in non-urban areas are benefitting most from the surge in domestic travel. However, the shrinkage of inbound tourist numbers as well as the frozen domestic tourism market over 1H/2020 caused Taiwan’s 2020 tourism revenue to fall by 50% compared with 2019, equivalent to US$13 billion.