Vaccine passports, domestic tourism, pricey flights – is this the future of travel in a post-pandemic Asia?

Name: Phuket a 'ghost island' as Covid-19 pandemic keeps tourists away from Thai travel hotspot
Uploaded: 2021-01-02T00:30:15.000Z
Duration: 3 min 2 s
Description: Phuket a 'ghost island' as Covid-19 pandemic keeps tourists away from Thai travel hotspot

The coronavirus has changed the industry, forcing companies and countries alike to pivot from their existing models in a region where tourism is a huge economic driver

But catering to local travellers cannot fully make up for the downturn, experts say, while changing appetites and abundant concerns mean the future is anything but certain

Reading Time:6 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

People take selfies at a tourist attraction in Malacca, Malaysia, in December 2020. Photo: Xinhua

Kok Xinghui

Published: 8:30am, 2 Jan 2021Updated: 11:11am, 4 Jan 2021

When international travel returns, it’s likely tourists will have to use a second passport – a globally recognised one that shows all the vaccines they have taken. Even with the new documentation, however, the free movement of people that happened in pre-pandemic times is unlikely to return this year, with travellers mostly limited to travel bubbles or business lanes. And with fewer flights and more vaccines and tests, hopping aboard a plane is likely to become a lot more expensive – and a lot less frequent.

Those were the predictions of tourism experts who spoke to This Week in Asia – with the additional point that just like last year, travellers are more likely to stick to exploring their own countries rather than heading overseas.

Hotelier Ho Kwon Ping – the executive chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings, which runs hotels across Asia, America, Africa and the Middle East – told a recent conference that travel would become more purposeful, with people thinking harder before buying a flight ticket, whether for leisure or business. Meanwhile, Abhineet Kaul, senior director of public sector and government at Frost & Sullivan, said it would be “at least 2024 before tourism is back to the levels of 2018 and 2019”.

Travel has changed drastically since January last year, when countries around the world began to ban flights from China in reaction to the spread of the coronavirus there. As the restrictions spread in the wake of Covid-19, international travel ground to a standstill. Little has changed almost 12 months later, with many countries now banning arrivals from Britain and South Africa due to a more infectious variant of the disease.

There have been incremental efforts to open some travel channels. Thailand recently eased travel restrictions on visitors from 56 countries, including Singapore, Japan and the United States, allowing entry to tourists with a health certificate to prove they are free of Covid-19 – though they must still quarantine for 14 days.

Vietnam has from September allowed outgoing commercial flights to seven Asian destinations, but domestic carriers are still barred from operating inbound flights. Visitors from the likes of Brunei, Vietnam and New Zealand are allowed to enter Singapore, but travel is not permitted in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, a highly anticipated travel bubble between the island nation and Hong Kong collapsed when the latter saw a resurgence of Covid-19.

03:02

Phuket a 'ghost island' as Covid-19 pandemic keeps tourists away from Thai travel hotspot

The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) expects international tourism to decline over 70 per cent in 2020, regressing to the levels of 30 years ago. In the January-October period last year, it estimates that the world lost US$935 billion in tourism export revenues, or more than 10 times the loss that occurred during the 2009 global economic crisis, as 900 million holidaymakers cancelled their travel plans.

Select Voice

Choose your listening speed

Get through articles 2x faster

1.25x

250 WPM

Slow

Average

Fast

00:0000:00

1.25x