IT WILL be a long road ahead for Asia-Pacific tourism post-Covid 19, with a travel expert predicting recovery in 2024, when hotels return to 2019 occupancy and revenue levels.
But the region is expected to recover ahead of others, if travel restrictions are lifted by July or August.
In the recent “Travel Tomorrow” webinar co-hosted by the Department of Tourism (DOT) and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) STR area director for Asia Pacific Jesper Palmqvist, said the global research company earlier projected that recovery would happen in 2022. “Our forecast now is 2024. So that’s a long time. It sounds scary. But what I’m saying is that by 2022, we’ll see occupancy very close to 2019, but [room] rates usually lag after. If you have a big domestic market, which you do in the Philippines, it will ramp up a little bit quicker than others.” (See “Travel experts suggest PHL adopt inter-island travel corridors to help tourism recover,” in the BusinessMirror, June 5, 2020.)
STR data showed in 2019, average occupancy rate among Philippine hotels was at 70 percent, compared to the average of 50 percent for April and May 2020. The Philippines has allowed hotels and other accommodation establishments to remain open for employees of essential industries like hospitals, business process outsourcing, and returning overseas Filipino workers. Longtime guests, including tourists booked before the enhanced community quarantine was imposed on March 16, have also been allowed to remain in their hotels.
An STR survey last year showed Metro Manila hotels were financially in good shape (See, “Profits of Metro Manila hotels rising—STR,” in the BusinessMirror, September 12, 2019).
Data from the UNWTO indicated that Asia lost 35 percent of its international tourists from February to April.
UNWTO officials hoped that travel restrictions would ease up in July, with countries like Spain and Italy already announcing they are open to international travel within the European Union.
At the same webinar, Sandra Carvao, chief of UNWTO’s Tourism Market and Intelligence Competitiveness said, if this scenario prevails, she sees the loss of just 60 percent of international tourists towards the end of the year. “If we start seeing opening processes in July and August, probably Asia is better positioned trying to recover traffic than other regions, where most of the travel will take place in July, August and September.”
What will likely recover first in the region is domestic tourism, travel to local accessible destinations for leisure or weekend getaways, which has already started to happen in mainland China, said Palmqvist. Corporate business “will come much earlier than we thought, in business that is approved by government, and then smaller business that are allowed in certain regions in some countries. I think because of the size and the variation in Philippines, we can see that here too and that’s true for the group,” he added.
But for the Meetings Incentives Conventions and Exhibition (MICE) business, “We’re looking at smaller events, hybrid events where technology will be important. Maybe you have five people online in one room in a hotel or in a meeting room, and the rest are spread out digitally.” Definitely, international tourism will be the last to recover, he said.
For consumer confidence in the tourism industry to return, Carvao stressed there must “very transparent information on the situation on the ground all that done in full collaboration with the private sector with the necessary health authorities. So that borders can be open with responsibility and that there are also our monetization of protocols because consumers need to have that safety that when they go to one destination or to another they can expect the same level of safety.”
She also underscored that stakeholders themselves need to be transparent among themselves to boost the confidence of tourists. “We need to ensure that the travel journey is safe and seamless the whole way, and many issues arise here like cancellation policies transparency and information that consumers need to have at the time of booking to actually make that journey integrated. So the players can share information, obviously, with respect for data privacy and regulations. [It’s] also very important to make sure that the destinations have their own measures in place to ensure consumers can feel confident again to travel.”