It is no surprise that Southeast Asia is now in a hurry to welcome tourists: in 2019, the region was valued at $393 billion (€340 billion) for the regional economy. For countries like Cambodia and Thailand, tourism accounts for about a third and a fifth of their total GDP.
But, he COVID-19 The pandemic has hit hard. The region welcomed 143 million tourists in 2019, but fell by 81% last year, reducing the number of visitors to just 26.1 million, mostly from neighboring states, according to data from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.ASEAN) section.
How European tourists factor into Southeast Asian attention to welcoming returning tourists is another matter.
In 2019, the UK accounted for the 13th largest share of tourists visiting the region, with 3.1 million British travelers visiting Southeast Asia. According to ASEAN figures, about 2.1 million Germans and 2 million French also visited the region.
However, Europeans excluding Russians accounted for only 5.9% of the 143 million tourists who visited Southeast Asia in 2019. This was down from 6.4% in 2015 and 7.8% in 2010.
Europeans ‘just don’t bring in much money’
Frederick Klim, a research fellow and lecturer at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said he does not think European tourists will be important to the Southeast Asian tourism industry.
“Europeans will always visit and always be welcome – they don’t bring in much money to the overall tourism income,” he said.
Buddhist monks wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) donate food and other necessities to vulnerable people whose livelihoods have been severely affected by the coronavirus disease pandemic on the outskirts of Bangkok, Thailand, September 18, 2021. (Reuters)
Thailand launched a so-called sandbox scheme in July in its most popular beach island, Phuket. Since the beginning of October, Thailand has reduced the quarantine period for visitors to seven days. Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, which includes five other tourist destinations, will reopen from November thanks to sandbox plans. Most other regions will open in December.
Vietnam wants to open Phu Quoc Island from next month as a sandbox plan. Cambodia, which has the second highest vaccination rate in the region, hopes to welcome tourists by the end of the year.
Malaysia and the Philippines are also looking for ways to kick-start significant parts of their economies, although Kuala Lumpur’s newly passed tourism recovery plan focuses on domestic tourism first.
A spokesperson for the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), an industry body, said, “Before the pandemic hit, South East Asia’s arrivals were mainly from Asian countries.”
Chinese accounted for 21% of all visitors to the region, 10% from Singapore, and 7% from South Koreans. In 2010, only 5.4 million Chinese visited the region. As of 2019 it was up to around 32 million as per official figures.
Chinese citizens important for tourism
However, the difficult question for Southeast Asian officials and businesses is whether what was true in 2019 will be true in the years to come.
In May, the Economist Intelligence Unit predicted that China would vaccinate 60% of its population by the second quarter of 2022, but the quarantine requirements for returning tourists would not be eased until the end of 2022, first from Hong Kong and Macau, and Then in 2023 for people traveling from other countries. It expected China’s outbound tourism to return to pre-pandemic levels by early 2024.
A man wearing a face mask to protect against Covid-19 rests on a bench on a tourist shopping street in Beijing. (AP)
This is a major problem for the economies of Southeast Asia. For example, Thailand saw an 88.6% drop in Chinese tourist arrivals in 2020 compared to the previous year. According to the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization, Chinese tourists spent $254.6 billion overseas in 2019, accounting for nearly a fifth of global tourism spending.
Last month, Malaysia’s new Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yacoub received mixed reviews when he argued that ASEAN should create a “travel bubble” with China for fully vaccinated tourists. “By doing this we will be in a better position to not only revive the tourism industry, but also restore our people-to-people contacts,” he said.
However, some analysts say it is too early to talk about Southeast Asian tourism sectors ever returning to pre-pandemic norms.
“Tourism as we knew it would not return,” Klim said. “From now on there will always be a need for full immunization, including boosters and tracking apps. Neither Singapore nor Malaysia will ever drop these requirements again,” he said.
“The easy, virtually unrestricted travel we are used to will never return to the same extent. New and permanent regulations will make it more cumbersome and costly.
This will be a matter of concern for Chinese tourists. The Economist Intelligence Unit report said they would be attracted to “countries they consider safe and that offer easier visa application processes.”
Opening up quarantine-free travel could be key
Analysts said that if Chinese tourists cannot be expected to return en masse for many years, Southeast Asian governments and industry bodies should focus on previously less important tourism markets.
Steven Shipani, chief tourism industry expert at the Asian Development Bank’s Southeast Asia Regional Department, said the pandemic showed the importance of market diversification.
“Southeast Asian countries will redouble their efforts to attract visitors from various source markets, including Europe,” he added.
“The region is an incredibly popular long-distance destination for European travelers, so it is important to open the borders to Europeans,” a WTTC spokesperson said. Due to the travel is recovering faster than many other areas. Sanctions.
In August, Singapore opened its first quarantine-free travel program for vaccinated people with Germany, while this week the city-state allowed vaccination-free travel with France, Italy, Spain and the UK, making vaccination-free Travel allowed.
Are some countries opening too early?
The measures have sparked concerns that Southeast Asian countries are reopening too early for tourists. A major problem is vaccine disparity, said Abhishek Rimal, Asia-Pacific Emergency Health Coordinator at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
While Singapore and Cambodia have fully immunized about 80% and 66% of their populations, less than a quarter have been vaccinated in Indonesia and the Philippines. Meanwhile, Thailand, the country most dependent on tourism, has fully vaccinated only a third of its population.
“A critical balancing act is happening every day in Asia between devastating infection rates and death rates, and this pandemic is having a massive impact on the casual labor force and daily wage earners, many of whom depend on an influx of income or food. . from the tourism industry,” Rimal said.
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