This was a hard landing for an industry whose growth had been relentless - and resistant to wider recessions - for the previous half-century. Neither the oil crisis of the 1970s, dotcom bubble of the early 2000s nor the 2008 financial crash were a match for the tourism sector’s boundless upward trajectory. Between 1950 and 1989, revenue accruing from global tourism made a death-defying hundredfold leap from $2.1b to $209b. By 2019, the industry was worth nine trillion dollars, contributing 10.3% to global GDP.  

Nor was tourism in Taiwan any slouch. While not quite a powerhouse of international travel on the scale of near neighbours like Thailand or Malaysia, the value of inbound tourism in Taiwan had followed the global trajectory throughout the twentieth century - and was exceeding it in the twenty-first. While just one million visitors came to the island in 2000, by 2019 that number had doubled several times to well over 11 million. 

Against this backdrop of relentless growth, the sudden imposition of an almost total barrier to inbound visitors came as more of a shock to tourism operators than almost anyone else. In this short documentary, we spoke with a variety of businesses in the sector about their experience of shock therapy - and why it was worth fighting for survival.