According to travel analytics company ForwardKeys, the travel setback caused by the coronavirus outbreak has nowspread beyond China. Other parts of the Asia Pacific region are experiencing a10.5% slowdown in outbound travel bookings for March and April, excluding tripsto and from China and Hong Kong.
As of February 9, the setbacklooks likely to be most marked in North East Asia, where outbound bookings forMarch & April, are 17.1% behind where they were at the equivalent momentlast year. Bookings from South Asia are 11.0% behind; from South East Asia are8.1% behind and from Oceania 3.0% behind.
By comparison, the all-important Chineseoutbound market is much more severely affected. Currently, bookings for March and April are set to be just 55.9% of what they were at the equivalent pointin 2019. Forward bookings to Asia Pacific are 58.3% behind; bookings to Europeare 36.7% behind, to Africa & the Middle East are 56.1% behind and to theAmericas are 63.2% behind.
Looking backwards over the three-week periodfollowing the imposition of government travel restrictions, in response to thecoronavirus outbreak, outbound travel from China has fallen by 57.5%. Travel toall parts of the world has been severely down, with the Americas worst affectedin relative terms and Asia Pacific in absolute terms. Travel to Asia Pacific,which receives 75% of the Chinese outbound market, was down by 58.3%; travel toEurope was down by 41.7%; travel to Africa & the Middle East was down by51.6% and travel to the Americas was down by 64.1%.
Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys said:“The world’s largest and highest spending outbound travel market, China, is insevere difficulty; cancellations are growing by the day and the trend is nowspreading to surrounding countries. On the brighter side, however, we are notseeing a slowdown in travel outside the Asia Pacific region; so, this is amoment to fill the void by studying alternative origin markets and focusingpromotional efforts on them. We will be monitoring the situation carefullybecause in a disease outbreak like this, travel trends can change quickly; anddifferent markets are likely to respond differently.”
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