COVID-19 and the Transformation of Tourism Industry in Sabah

Abstract

Tourism industry is one of the major contributors to the economy, globally and domestically. In Malaysia, Sabah reached a new record level for hitting the highest tourism receipts at RM8.342 billion in 2018 and 2019. COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in global challenges, especially in tourism industry. Thus, this conceptual paper aims to determine how tourism practitioners in Sabah deal with the resilience issue for the transformation of a better recovery or future. This paper will apply the four (4) general phase of change event from resilience adaptive cycle; (1) Reorganization (innovation and creativity), (2) Growth (exploiting opportunities that arise from Phase 1), (3) Consolidation (establishing fixed institutions in Phase 2 to adapt to context changes) and (4) Collapse (failure or fixed institutions in Phase 3 to adapt to context changes). This study uses quantitative approach for data collection. As a result, this paper finds that not all of the organization move through all these 4 phases as they are handling it according to their own system or suitability.