Asia reopening tourism without biggest spender China
Dhaka: Asia's gradual easing of international travel restrictions is proving to be a welcome relief for the region's hard-hit tourism operators slowly opening up to visitors from around the world.
However, China, previously the world's largest outbound tourism market, is keeping international air capacity at just 2 per cent of pre-pandemic levels and has yet to relax tight travel restrictions as it sticks to zero tolerance for Covid-19.
That has left a USD 255 billion annual spending hole in the global tourism market for operators such as Thailand's Laguna Phuket to try and fill.
According to reports, Managing Director Ravi Chandran said Laguna Phuket's five resorts have shifted their marketing focus to Europe, the United States and United Arab Emirates to make up for the loss of Chinese visitors, who accounted for 25-30 per cent of its pre-Covid business.
The pandemic has cost Thailand an estimated USD 50 billion a year in tourism revenue and Chinese were above-average spenders based on tourism ministry data.
Thailand hopes to receive 180,000 foreign tourists this year, a fraction of around 40 million it received in 2019, as it opened places beyond Phuket to tourists on November 1.
Many experts expect China to keep such stringent measures such as up to a three-week quarantine for those returning home until at least the second quarter of next year and possibly then open gradually on a country-by-country basis.
"Destinations have to identify new source markets and learn how to market and cater to different cultures," Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Chief Executive Liz Ortiguera said, citing the Maldives as a rare example of a successful pivot during the pandemic.
The string of islands in the Indian Ocean promoted itself heavily at trade shows and attracted more Russian and Indian visitors to its luxury resorts and sparkling waters.
China had been its greatest source of tourists before the pandemic but the Maldives saw overall arrivals in the first nine months of 2021 fall just 12 per cent versus the same period of 2019.
