This is about tourism recovery. Super important for many economies including Malaysia which used to have over 26 million tourists per year in 2019.
My very last overseas trip before COVID-19 should be the one where I flew to Phuket and then drove to Krabi and flew back from Krabi. It was a very relaxing trip despite me being the driver and we enjoyed lots of great food, never ending trips to the beach and the kids, well the kids only needs the hotel swimming pool and they could stay there for hours. Haha. What was your last overseas trip? Would you want to travel again IF that country and Malaysia has a travel bubble arrangement?
If we looked at what happened when Singapore and Hong Kong wanted to start a travel bubble, the flight and hotel bookings shot up through the roof. Of course it got cancelled but I am very sure it will be back soon as both Singapore and Hong Kong should achieve sufficient COVID-19 vaccination coverage by end of 2021. I am very sure Singaporeans love to visit Hong Kong and Hong Kong people really do need a change of scene from just Victoria Peak, Repulse Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui. Well, the below would be the prediction of Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA). Briefly, not so soon.
Article in webintravel.com. The image shows Asia’s COVID-19 vaccination timeline.
Against such a scenario and looking at the near-term outlook of airlines with forward bookings pointing to increased weakness in demand (chart below), AAPA is projecting a rebound to 2019 levels by 2024 – and some might say that’s on the optimistic side.
Please do read the full article here for even more comprehensive reporting. Article in webintravel.com
Recovery as per AAPA
AAPA says recovery to 2019 levels will only happen in 2024. I hope they are conservative. I am not sure if many wants to stop travelling for the next 3 years. 🙂 For me, I think travelling will restart at least to the countries with full vaccinations. Both sides need to have the agreements and also the SOPs in place. If there’s a need for quarantine if 14 days either side, then forget about any travelling recovery.
Travel bubbles between some of these countries may start to spur travel and as usual, if these show positive results; more travel and no increase in number of COVID-19 cases, then more countries would soon follow. ASIA is home to 4.47 billion people. This is a wow. Okay, if we look a little deeper, ASEAN is home to 655 million people. Let’s just get 1% of these people to travel and that’s still 6.5 million people. Everyone spends just RM1,000 for their travel? That’s RM6.5 billion! Multiplier effects of 4? RM26 billion! Quite a wow for a start.
I do hope all the countries keep to their vaccination schedules. This year may be too soon but 2022 may just be that year when travelling around starts to become common again. I say, START. I did not say it could return to 2019 levels yeah. Happy following.
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