Travel almost back to pre-SARS levels - Business Travel - severe acute respiratory syndrome

Business Asia, June, 2003

Abacus International, Asia's largest travel and airline ticket reservation company, said travel demand in the region should return to pre-SARS levels by July as the virus is contained and cheaper tickets attract travellers.

Bookings in Singapore and Hong Kong, two of the cities worst-affected by the SARS virus, have "more or less returned to normal", Abacus chief executive Don Birch said. "The SARS recovery has started, is established and we should get there in July," he said. An increase in travel bookings may help Cathay Pacific Airways, Singapore Airlines and other Asian airlines, which have made losses and cancelled 1150 weekly flights as severe acute respiratory syndrome made people unwilling to travel.

The World Health Organization has lifted its travel advisory on Hong Kong and has taken Singapore off its list of places infected by SARS.

Singapore Air this month started selling tickets as low as half-price to lure travellers to the city state. Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong's largest carrier, also started offering cheaper fares.

Cathay also said it carried about 11,000 passengers on some days this month, compared with a low of 5000 a day when SARS broke out in mid-March. "Over the last month, we have seen a remarkable recovery in bookings, such that in areas outside China and Taiwan bookings have been running at or above levels we had before SARS," Birch said. China's travel recovery has been slower than the rest of Asia because the government continues to restrict official travel, Birch said. China has about three-fifths of the world's SARS victims, while Taiwan has the world's third-highest number of victims.

In other SARS-related news, a travel industry association has warned that about three million people working in airlines and other tourism-related companies may lose their jobs in Hong Kong, China, Singapore and Vietnam this year because of the spread of SARS.

Regional economies may lose about US$10 billion this year, assuming the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome--which has killed about 779 people--stops this month, said John Koldowski, managing director of the strategic intelligence unit at the Pacific Asia Travel Association