International travel likely last to recover post COVID

MANILA, Philippines — Without an effective vaccine against the new coronavirus disease, international travel will be the last sector of the global economy to fully recover, said London-based research firm Capital Economics.

In a new research brief titled “How quickly will tourism recover?” the firm said recoveries in international travel would likely be slow as countries are being careful about accepting visitors.

Vietnam, for example, is only accepting visitors from countries that have reported no new daily infections for 30 days.

“Demand is also likely to be very weak. The guidance from governments around the world is still to avoid international travel. Even when travel advise changes, many will remain wary of getting on an aeroplane,” said Capital Economics.

“Our GDP (gross domestic product) forecasts assume that without an effective vaccine, international travel will be the last sector of the global economy to recover.”

Capital Economics noted that in China, where the virus has been under control for a couple of months, domestic passenger numbers are still around 50 percent of pre-crisis levels.

While this will be a blow to tourist dependent countries like Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia, some economies may experience benefits from people spending more at home.

“If the pandemic leads to people spending more time at home, either on ‘staycations’ or on other goods and services, they could experience a small net boost to GDP,” said Capital Economics.

Tourism across Asia has been severely affected by the pandemic since the beginning of the year as countries enforced travel bans in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Some countries, however, which have imposed looser lockdowns and were quicker to contain the spread of the virus like Vietnam and Thailand, are planning  to start admitting foreign tourists beginning July.