Opinion | Why domestic tourism will carry Asian travel sector until Covid-19 pandemic ends

Name: Chinese travellers pack tourist sites for May Day holiday as Covid-19 fears fade
Uploaded: 2021-05-15T00:45:17.000Z
Duration: 1 min 26 s
Description: Chinese travellers pack tourist sites for May Day holiday as Covid-19 fears fade

Where domestic restrictions have been lifted, domestic travel and tourism have resumed, giving a much-needed boost to the hard-hit sector

Regional policymakers and industry players have innovated and discovered new value propositions to survive and thrive during the downturn

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Catharine KhoandAnne Oeking

Published: 8:45am, 15 May 2021Updated: 8:45am, 15 May 2021

As Singapore enters a tighter phase of Covid-19 restrictions this weekend, the future of its “travel bubble” with Hong Kong has been thrown into limbo yet again. Under this arrangement, which was set to start on May 26 after a delay, travellers from these two financial hubs would have been exempted from quarantine.

It would have given a glimmer of hope to the rest of Asia that borders can be reopened safely. As yet, many borders remain closed and the prospect of travel remains uncertain.

Asean+3 – comprising the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations economies, China, Japan and South Korea – constitutes almost 30 per cent of the world’s population but accounts for only about 3 per cent of total confirmed global Covid-19 cases. Despite the low caseload, several economies are experiencing renewed waves of infection.

Ten of the 14 Asean+3 borders are completely closed, with the remainder open only to small segments of travellers or implementing strict testing and quarantine rules. The region received around 3 million international visitors between April and December 2020, compared to more than 200 million – many of them intraregional – during the same period in 2019.

The tenacious, evolving nature of the pandemic has necessitated a constant review of border policies and pushed back border reopenings by some countries several times. Regional economies with high reliance on foreign travellers, such as Cambodia, Thailand and Hong Kong, have been hit hard. A full rebound in tourism is unlikely until the pandemic is under control globally through mass vaccinations.

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Chinese travellers pack tourist sites for May Day holiday as Covid-19 fears fade

Where domestic restrictions have been gradually lifted in economies with successful virus containment, domestic travel and tourism have resumed, giving a much-needed boost to the hard-hit sector. In several larger Asean+3 economies – China, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam – domestic travellers accounted for the vast majority of visitors pre-pandemic and domestic tourism accounted for a large share of revenue in the industry.

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