BOSTON — The coronavirus has been hurting local businesses in Chinatown, especially restaurants. But a travel agency in the heart of the village is also hurting, and that agency’s owner is scared about how long the outbreak will last.
Lily Zhuang is the owner of Feti Travel Agency. It’s located right in the heart of the usually bustling Chinatown. After the deadly coronavirus and the ban of flights going to and from China, things have changed.
“You can see zero phone calls, zero visits,” she said.
Feti Travel has been around for 30 years and this is the first time Zhuang says business has plummeted far beyond what she expected. Employees are now forced to stay home unpaid.
“Everybody is home. We are encouraging everyone to use their vacation time to stay home,” she said. “All the drivers [and] tour guides are home unpaid because they are contract[ed].”
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Zhuang tells Boston 25 News that Feti Travel is out close to a million dollars since the virus hit.
During the winter months, Chinese winter camps usually like to visit the Boston area.
“All the group is banned from coming out of China,” Zhuang said. “[They] visit a school, and students are enthusiastic about coming to the U.S. and study[ing] for the future.”
Businesses across Chinatown are struggling.
“This is obviously something we will be dealing with for a few months,” said Neil Dutta, an economist with Renaissance Macro Research. “I think late in the spring we are going to start to shake this off, I think things will start getting back to normal.”
The owner of Feti Travel says she has family in China. They say the streets are like a ghost town, where people are even afraid to go out and buy day-to-day groceries. They’ve been doing touchless shopping, where people are ordering food on an app and it’s delivered and left on your door handle so there is no hand-to-hand contact.
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