Post-COVID packages take shape
Southeast Asia tourism operators look to intra-regional travel to revive hard-hit sector
Travel and tourism industry players welcome the reopening of borders in Southeast Asia, but such optimism is tempered by the realization that the industry is not returning to its prepandemic level anytime soon.
There may be some boost to domestic tourism in the first week of May as people celebrate Eid al Fitr — marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In the Muslimmajority countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, there were major traffic jams in the city as people rushed to get back to their hometowns.
But international tourism is a different story. Tourism industry executives said that while vaccination rollouts and the easing of restrictions may encourage people to travel, it will take some time before the region’s tourism industry can fully recover. Major sources of tourists to Southeast Asia — like China and Japan — still have travel restrictions. Also, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has spiked oil prices and airline ticket prices.
“Our projection is that we will reach maybe 90 percent of the 2019 level (of tourist arrivals) sometime in 2023,” said Fazal Bahardeen, founder and CEO of the Singapore-based Muslim lifestyle and travel consultancy CrescentRating.
Fazal said that although borders are open, people are not rushing in droves to cross them. This is because while most Southeast Asian countries now allow quarantine-free travel for fully vaccinated travelers, this does not make travel preparation any less cumbersome. Even fully vaccinated travelers, before they can travel, have to get tested for COVID-19 and prepare documents to prove that they are not infected with the virus.
Also, with the Russia-Ukraine conflict driving up oil prices, air fares have increased about 20-30 percent, Fazal said. And this is a major challenge for travelers coming from the United States and Europe.
Philippine Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat said in a press briefing that over 313,000 foreign tourists have entered the country since the border reopened three months ago. This is still a far cry from the 8.26 million tourists who arrived in 2019.
In Indonesia, the number of international visitor arrivals declined by 61 percent to 1.56 million in 2021, according to New York-based travel news site Skift. In the first two months of 2022, the number of foreign tourist arrivals in the country reached 336,000.
Singapore’s Changi Airport handled 1.14 million passenger movements in March 2022, crossing the one-million mark for the first time since March 2020, according to official data. This, however, is equivalent to only 20 percent of March 2019’s traffic.
Southeast Asia is one of the world’s most dynamic regional economies and counts the travel and tourism sector as a key contributor to GDP. In 2019, visitor arrivals to the region hit over 140 million. But the pandemic pushed down the number of arrivals to 26.2 million in 2020, according to data from the ASEAN Secretariat.
Putu Winastra, chairman of the Association of the Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies in Bali (ASITA Bali), said that while the Indonesian resort island is open to fully vaccinated travelers, the number of travelers is still limited as only a few airlines are flying to Bali.
“The air fare is expensive, so tourists will think twice before going to Bali,” he said. He hopes that more international airlines will be coming to Bali soon, creating more competition in air fares.
Winastra said ASITA Bali is organizing a hybrid travel fair in June — the annual Bali and Beyond Travel Fair — to attract more tourists to Bali and other parts of Indonesia. He said over 100 exhibitors from 29 countries will participate in the event.
Fazal, of CrescentRating, said there is an opportunity now to boost intraregional travel within ASEAN, given that tourists from China, Japan, Europe and North America are not coming to the region.
“Encouraging intra-ASEAN travel is easier (and cheaper),” he said. Not only can ASEAN travelers journey visa-free around the region, they are already familiar with its countries’ cultures and attractions.
He cited Muslim travelers, noting the region is home to a huge Muslim population and they constitute about 40 percent of intra-ASEAN travelers.
“That’s a considerable number to try and tap into. So that’s a huge opportunity that can be leveraged to accelerate recovery,” Fazal said.