Tsunami fears still hurting Asian tourism

The Asia-Pacific region could lose as much as $3bn (€2.2bn) in tourist revenue this year because of concerns among international travellers about visiting Asia following the December 26 tsunami, a business executive said today.

The comment by Paul Dowling, a Singapore-based senior vice president of Visa International, came as Visa released a survey that showed some tourists might stay away from Asia even though most resorts were not damaged in the tsunami.

“As a direct result of the tsunami, there is a risk that 9% of international travellers planning a holiday in 2005 have switched their travel plans to other regions,” said the survey, which was commissioned by Visa for the World Tourism Organisation.

The study said 30% of travellers who were committed to travel in Asia said “there were countries they would not consider as a result of the tsunami”.

Those countries include Indonesia, Thailand, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. An earthquake off the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on December 26 triggered giant waves across the region, killing more than 125,000 people in Indonesia alone.

Dowling said some tourists were not travelling to the Indonesian resort island of Bali even though the destruction occurred far away in the province of Aceh, and that some also wrongly believed Singapore and the Philippines were affected.

He estimated that the Asia-Pacific region could lose $3bn (€2.2bn) in an industry that brought in $50bn (€37.2bn) from visitors annually. Dowell based the estimate roughly on the surveys of tourists who might choose to skip Asia as a destination.

Visa commissioned the study for the World Tourism Organisation. The survey was conducted by AC Nielsen, which interviewed 500 respondents in each of 10 countries from February 17 to 27.

The countries were the US, Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, Japan, South Korea, China and Australia.

“Concerns over the state of tourism facilities and services in the areas affected by the tsunami are high among those considering Asia,” the survey said. “Health is another area of concern and one where travellers have said they would like more information.”

Travellers from Sweden, Canada, Britain and Australia were more likely to holiday in tsunami-hit areas as a way of aiding the local community and economy, according to the survey.

Dowell said Asian tourism experienced downturns after the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, and the 2003 crisis over severe acute respiratory syndrome, or Sars.

“Sars was a catastrophe that hit almost overnight. International travel just stopped. There was a very, very sharp deterioration. People in the immediate aftermath were asking many of the same questions that they are now,” Dowell said.

“The falloff in the business was dramatic. But the recovery was also pretty rapid,” he said. “Asia has got experience in how you address this.”