Beijing authorities have taken aggressive measures to contain the outbreak in the city, home to more than 20 million people.

These included lockdowns of residential communities and body temperature checks. There were 435 confirmed cases in the capital and eight deaths as of Wednesday.

Inbound travellers were required to register with local communities and regularly report their health status. At Beijing Capital International Airport, a zone at Terminal 3 was designated for screening arrivals from countries where Covid-19 hit hardest.

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Emilie Chaudouard, the general manager of Beijing-based agency Travel-Stone, whose tours for March and April were cancelled because of the outbreak, said: “At the moment, there are no tours – everything is closed, there is nothing you can visit as a traveller coming into Beijing. Everyone cancelled everything, and everyone is scared. No one knows how long it is going to last.”

Chaudouard, who quarantined herself after recently returning to Beijing from Nepal, said travellers began cancelling tour bookings at the end of January as airlines cut their services to China. She was waiting to see if customers who had scheduled tours in May would be able to visit Beijing.

Travel-Stone would have to lay off two employees and shut its office to stay afloat, she said.

“We don’t know when China is going to be open again, when the Forbidden City will open again, so how can I advise someone to come, when for their first trip to China they cannot even go to the Forbidden City?” she said. “It’s not only the tourism industry – everyone is hurt, and I’m not sure that the government would be able to provide help for everyone.

“We are losing the most important thing, which is the travellers, and there is nothing we can do.”

Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, said the measures amounted to a “de facto travel ban” that could hurt the operation of businesses in China.

“We would like to see a fine-tuned approach in view of the WHO [World Health Organisation] guidelines advising against restrictions on international travel, which were initially rightfully praised by China as a ‘rational approach’,” Wuttke said.

“A major concern is not only the de facto travel ban on specialists and top management from Europe, who are needed to get operations up and running, the biggest complaint comes from our members about the random implementation of travel rules across China.”

Additional reporting by Wendy Wu