The hotel and restaurant industry has lost nearly Rp 70 trillion in revenue as leisure travel has come to a complete halt, while aviation and tour operators have lost Rp 15 trillion in revenue, according to data from the Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI).

“More than 95 percent of workers in the tourist sector are being furloughed without pay,” PHRI chairman Hariyadi Sukamdani told lawmakers during a hearing on Tuesday, adding that 2,000 hotels and 8,000 restaurants closed during the first three months of the outbreak, which started in March in Indonesia.

Hariyadi told lawmakers that the government’s tax incentives were not an effective measure to stop the bleeding, adding that many workers in the tourist sector could not access the government’s pre-employment card program, resulting in a further blow to the industry.

“Banks will need to extend the debt-restructuring program and they will need to provide working capital loans” to rescue businesses in the tourist sector, he went on to say.

Indonesia’s foreign visitor arrivals plunged 86.9 percent year-on-year (yoy) in May to 163,646, according to Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data. From January to May, Indonesia recorded just 2.9 million foreign tourist visits, a 53.56 percent drop from the same period last year.

Tourism has been one of the sectors hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak as countries around the world imposed travel restrictions while Indonesia implemented a partial lockdown to curb the spread of the virus, leaving tourist destinations empty since March.

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