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Post-tsunami travellers plan Phuket trip
(China Daily)
Updated: 2005-02-02 08:33
Thirty Chinese tourists are scheduled to leave for Phuket, Thailand, on
February 9, spending the first day of the lunar year at the renowned tourist
destination badly destroyed by the deadly December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Thirty Chinese
tourists are scheduled to leave for Phuket, Thailand, on February 9 to
make a Spring Festival holiday. [sohu] | The group members will start their five-day trips from Shanghai, Beijing, and
Guangzhou in South China's Guangdong Province.
Each participated in online bidding dubbed "touring Phuket," which is
promoting tourism to help restore the economy in the tsunami-hit regions. All
the money they spend will be donated in their names to the ravaged region,
according to Ctrip.com, an on-line travel company.
But still, the overall number of tourists going to Southeast Asian countries,
which were the hardest hit, is experiencing a decline during the Spring Festival
holiday.
Ouyang Chaosong, the person in charge of the Beijing-based Southeast Asia
division of the China Travel Service Head Office, predicted the number of
tourists going to Southeast Asian countries around the holidays will decrease by
half.
Normally, Ouyang's company sends 3,000 to 4,000 tourists to Southeast Asian
destinations each year during the festival period. But he said by January 26
only about 1,000 have registered for visits there.
Signs of a hot season, such as overtime work at travel agencies and
additional flight arrangements for tours to Southeast Asia, have not
materialized this year, he said.
However, "the worry is fading away gradually," he added.
Trips to countries like the Philippines, Cambodia and Viet Nam have already
been fully booked, while those to Singapore and Malaysia have begun to revive,
according to Ouyang.
"Everyone is speaking of showing sympathy (to the victims of the disaster).
What we travel agencies can do to show our sympathy is to organize safe tours to
such countries," he said.
Travel agencies are also trying to attract consumers by low prices.
Wang Jian, a senior official of the Guangdong China Travel Service, based in
Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, said the price of a package tour to
Thailand for six days has dropped to less than 2,000 yuan (US$241) from the
usual 3,700 yuan (US$447).
He said the impact of the tsunamis is limited for the company due to such
efforts. There might be a 10 to 20 per cent shrinkage in the number of tourists
going to Southeast Asian countries during the Spring Festival holidays.
Zhang Guangrui, director of the tourism research centre at the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences, predicted that the disaster will affect not only the
coming Spring Festival holidays in mid-January, but also the Labour Day holidays
in May.
Both are dubbed "golden weeks" by the tourism sector in China.
The disaster will bring about psychological fears among most people, who will
stop going to disaster-hit places, he said, adding that travel agencies will
hesitate in making travel plans to such sites.
Meanwhile, it will take a period of time for the ravaged regions and
countries to recover and rebuild tourist infrastructure, Zhang said.
More people will go to countries like the Republic of Korea, Japan and
Germany instead, he said.
At an international forum held last week in Beijing on rebuilding confidence
and charting the road to reconstruction for the post-tsunami period, Zhang
Xuechun, senior financial economist of the Asian Development Bank China resident
mission, said the impact on tourists is mostly emotional. "But the impact will
not last for more than half a year," she predicted.
Ouyang is confident about the future. It is not the first time that the
tourism in Southeast Asia is affected by disasters, he said, referring to SARS
(severe acute respiratory syndrome) crisis in 2003 spring.
"The industry's ability to recover is strong," he added.
Disaster-hit countries are also showing confidence that tourists will be
back.
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