TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s Lion Travel has embarked on a recruitment drive that will see the country’s leading travel company increase its workforce with 500 new job openings.

The hiring drive seeks talent from retail, marketing, finance, management, software programming, visual design, and bus drivers, with the aim of bringing the size of its workforce to pre-COVID levels. It has downsized by 40% since the pandemic hit, from 3,000 to 1,800 currently, per Liberty Times.

Lion Travel has set up overseas branches in Japan, Thailand, the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and China, with a new location in South Korea in the works. Upbeat about the revival of global travel, the company plans to add employees with language skills in English, Japanese, Korean, and Cantonese.

According to the company, it will endeavor to create a travel ecosystem that requires innovation and cross-disciplinary expertise in areas from Web 3.0 applications to experience design. It has teamed up with Redefine Tourism Mixer, a local training center for travel-related professions, to offer a series of incubation programs for younger people aspiring to work in the tourism sector, per UDN.

Taiwan’s COVID-19 task force has hinted it will begin opening up borders from June amid rising vaccination coverage and the good condition of coordinated medical capacity, which has given an impetus for the battered travel industry to grow.