Coronavirus impacts trade

The deadly coronavirus outbreak continues to hurt tourism as travel plans are being suspended even to destinations that claim to be safe. We spoke to a few travel advisors to find out how they have been affected amidst this chaos.

EM Najeeb, Senior VP, IATO

“While this is the initial stage of the scare, for some time at least, tourists will avoid human contact by not travelling to certain destinations. In India, a few cases of coronavirus were identified and the state of Kerala has been at the forefront of taking all measures to protect the public from the threat of the virus, now declared a medical emergency in the state. Tourists have begun cancelling a good percentage of reservations and the virus has definitely affected the flow of FTAs to Kerala during season. Precautionary measures put in place to prevent flow of travellers from affected countries have also slowed FTAs.”

Guldeep Singh Sahni, MD, Weldon Tours & Travels

“There will be people who will not be travelling to China and there are people who are thinking of not travelling to those places that surround China. But, Indian outbound travellers are such that they will travel if they have to. They may not travel to China, but they will go to Australia, Canada, USA and Europe. So, the outbound numbers will not decline as much as we think, although individually, our companies will be impacted with the business that we do because some of us sell certain countries more than others.”

Inbound takes a hit

Dharmendra Singh Chauhan, Chairman, ADTOI – Maharashtra

“The coronavirus has also affected our inbound business. We have received two group cancellations so far. The clients were from Malaysia and Thailand, and they were slated to travel to Jammu & Kashmir, Delhi and parts of Maharashtra. This deadly virus has really started to affect our business. February, March and April are the last three months of the season for our inbound guests and ever since this pandemic has taken over the world, no one is opting to travel to another country. We were discussing a M!CE trip with a company from China, for their employees, to India for the months of September and October, but now even that’s affected.”

Kishan Biyani, MD, Ark Travels

“With the recent coronavirus outbreak that has been ongoing, there is bound to be a slowdown for Asian destinations, but if you look at Singapore as an example, the measures taken by them are strict; the same goes for Malaysia. There will be no Chinese nationals entering these countries so, undoubtedly, the next big market they will look at is India which means they will offer huge incentives to bring in the numbers. This will be a great opportunity for M!CE players. There is a fear factor right now which is understandable and will continue for a few more days, but things are bound to normalise after that.”