HOTEL&TOURISM SMARTreport #47

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWMario HardyCEO, PATAHARDY ON APACPATA’s Mario Hardy - on Asia-Pacific and the Covid-19 crisisTHAILAND (...)WAS ONE OF THEFIRST AREAS IN THEWORLD WHEREDOMESTIC TRAVELRESTARTEDPacific-Asia Travel Association CEO, Dr Mario Hardy talks to usabout the current state of affairs in the region, and how tourismwill change in the future.How has APAC fared compared toother regions?Essentially at this time, we are all equalin this crisis. If you look back to themonth of July in terms of the decrease intravel around the world compared to thesame time last year, the average globallywas 97.1% less than the previous year.If you look at all the regions around theworld, they all are on a similar pegging.Asia is no better than any other region interms of reduced travel. However, someparts of Asia have actually done better interms of managing the number of casesand managing the current situation andalso in terms of the reopening of thedomestic markets. Thailand, where I ambased, was one of the first areas in theworld where domestic travel restarted.Eight destinations in driving distancefrom Bangkok reopened at the start ofsummer, and have been quite full sincethen. Koh Samui, Phuket and Krabihaven’t done so well, however, because
Hotel & TourismSMARTreport #472020 55they rely so much on international travel.Most travel is being done within drivingdistance of the capital – to places like HuaHin, Pataya, and so on. So, in that sense,most Asian markets have been doing wellin terms of domestic tourism.Different governments have beenworking very differently in terms ofhelping the industry stay on its feetduring the crisis. How have you seenthis panning out?SOME COUNTRIESAROUND ASIA HAVEDEALT WITH THESUBSIDIES IN A MUCHBETTER WAY THANTHE OTHERSSome countries around Asia have dealtwith the subsidies in a much betterway than the others, in terms of theaccessibility, the speed with whichthe funds were being allocated anddistributed. Singapore, for example, hasbeen extremely efficient in providingmeans for people to access the funds atan early stage sufficiently to sustain themfor a period of time. Other countries havenot been organised so well, firstly in theamounts, and secondly in the distributionor access to the funds, which have notbeen fairly or equally distributed acrossdifferent regions. But the challenge is thatthese funds, made available in March,were distributed on the assumption thatby summer, we would be going back to“normal”.Back in March, PATA launched a tourismrecovery platform – a crisis resourcecentre – specifically with the purposeof collecting, and aggregating in onelocation, the subsidies that were availablefor each respective country, linked backto their respective governments. We hada few hundred destinations working withthat platform, and we were monitoringvery closely how these countries wereresponding; comparing them and seeingwho was doing better than the others.This was done mostly with the assumptionthat this would last until the summer,and things would gradually come back…which we know they haven’t. And it’svery unlikely that international borderswill reopen – at the same level they werebefore – until 2021. So, we are going tobe in this situation for a far longer periodof time. The question therefore is, “willthe governments provide additionalsubsidies in the weeks and months tocome to assist the businesses, or not. Weknow for a fact from an impact surveywe conducted already back in April that15% of the respondents (about 500SMEs across Asia-Pacific) had alreadyclosed their business permanently, withno intention to reopen. 42% of theserespondents also said at the time thatthey only had enough money for two tofour months, which means by now, mostof them would already be closed.How is tourism going to change overthe next months and years because ofthe Covid-19 crisis? Asia has some strongassets in the remoteness of many of itslocations. Is this something that is goingto be even more attractive for tourists?It’s a very complex question – for manyreasons. Big cities are generally thehardest hit. We know, through differentsurveys that have been conducted byourselves, but also other organisations,that there is a great desire for people thetravel. The desire to travel is still there, butpeople are less likely to book into crowdedareas or cities. They are more likely to goto tertiary cities and regions where thereare fewer people. They are seeking morenature-based destinations, more familyoriented, or with friends, as opposed tothe large groups that we had seen before.This is what people will be seeking outmoving forward. But the real challengeis air travel. We know how much all theairlines around the world have been soseverely impacted by this crisis. Many ofthe businesses of the airlines may not beable to sustain, and survive this crisis.What are the fears in the industrythat second or even third waves ofCoronavirus will impact business?We recently seen – in places like Vietnam– that were Covid-free, suddenly just hada resurgence of cases. We have seen asecond wave, or in some cases, a thirdwave – in Hong Kong or Singapore, orin other countries such as Korea, Japanand China, Australia … but also inEurope in the UK, Spain and France andin many other destinations around theworld. TripAdvisor and a number of otherinternational organisations came up afew months ago with what they call the“five phases” of the recovery. What weare seeing at the moment is countriesmoving back and forth between thesefive different phases of recovery. This willcontinue for quite some time to come.Until there is a vaccine or treatment, Istrongly believe that we will see thesedifferent stages at different levels indifferent destinations – and they will begoing back and forth between them
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HOTEL&TOURISM SMARTreport #47

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