MYBHA asks govt to protect hoteliers from COVID-19 impact

The Malaysia Budget Hotel Association (MyBHA) has asked the government to immediately draft an act to protect hotel owners and operators from the impact of COVID-19.

Its national deputy president, Sri Ganesh Michiel said the association had received a lot of negative feedback from its members that the Special Relief Fund (SRF) announced by the government was not friendly to hoteliers.

“The banking and financial institutions have been avoiding the hotel industry as they misunderstood this industry as a high-risk industry,” he said in a statement today.

The government is allocating RM5 billion under the SRF to provide relief assistance to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) affected by COVID-19.

Sri Ganesh, who is also MyBHA’s national legal and information and communications technology bureau chairman, claimed that property owners were allegedly taking advantage of the situation by rejecting, or being reluctant to allow a waiver or give rental discounts to their tenants who had invested in converting the property into a hotel.

He also claimed that the association found that unscrupulous property owners allegedly have the intention of owning the hotels unethically by reason of non-payment of rentals, as currently, they (property owners) were enjoying the moratorium period for their mortgage loans.

“This is not fair for our members who are making losses,” he said, adding that the move could lead to the closure of hotel businesses, as well as the rise in legal cases, bankruptcies and retrenchments.

-- BERNAMA