Coronavirus: effect on Asian tourism will carry into 2021, experts say

As diagnoses tick upwards, travel agents and hoteliers brace themselves for months, if not a full year, of disruption from outbreak

Trip cancellations to all of Asia, not just China, growing each day, operators say

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Thai health officials take the temperatures of tourists arriving in Phuket via cruise ship on Thursday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 9:00am, 15 Feb 2020Updated: 9:00am, 15 Feb 2020

Earlier this week, even as infections of the new coronavirus seemed to be slowing, the effects of the epidemic on the global tourism industry were accelerating rapidly.

The impact of the pneumonia-like disease caused by the virus, called Covid-19, is already being felt across the Asian continent, where leisure and business travel contributed US$884 billion to gross domestic product in 2017, the most recent year for which data has been compiled by the World Travel and Tourism Council. (Projections for 2018 are about US$1 trillion.)

For China alone, inbound tourism brought in US$127.3 billion in 2019, according to the country’s tourism bureau.

But as diagnoses tick upwards again, travel agents, operators, and hoteliers are bracing for at least months, if not a full year, of economic disruption from the outbreak, with long-term effects that may ripple well into 2021.

“The numbers of trip cancellations – not just to China but to the entire continent of Asia – is growing every day,” says Jack Ezon, founder and managing partner of luxury travel agency Embark Beyond.

“People are put off,” he said. “Sadly, a lot of them are just saying, ‘I don’t know if I want to go anywhere right now.’ Or, in many cases, ‘I’ll just go next year’.”

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