The paradisiacal beaches of Southeast Asia begin a difficult reopening

the paradisiacal Beaches of Bali became accessible to tourists since last Friday, one of the last destinations in Southeast Asia to reopen to international tourism despite the limitations still caused by the pandemic and a fundamental obstacle: the closure of China, its main source of travelers.

Southeast Asia – after the Caribbean, the area of ​​the world that most depends on the sightseeing– is looking for ways to re-attract travelers to its exotic beaches and dynamic cities, after visits fell 94.33% in 2021, in contrast to pre-pandemic levels, according to the ASEAN Tourism Office (formed by Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, and Indonesia).

In 2019, the last year in which it was possible to travel freely, tourism contributed almost 12% to the regional economy; Thailand then received 40 million tourists; Malaysia, 26 million; and Indonesia and the Philippines 16.1 and 8.3 million, respectively, according to official figures from each country.

The almost total closure to tourism in the past two years has been a tragedy for the coffers of a region with famous destinations such as Bali itself, Phuket (Thailand) or the urbanites Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, destroying seven of the 43 million jobs tourism-related jobs that existed in 2019, according to the International Labor Organization.

frustrated plans

Although many countries and enclaves were confident that this would be the year of recovery and have started more or less ambitious openings, very much depending on the vaccination levels of each place, the omicron variant and other factors boycott the plans.

In the face of the latest blows dealt by omicron in Indonesia, with peaks of around 18,000 daily infections this week – well above the 300 registered at the beginning of January – the opening of Bali, the country’s pre-eminent visit point, is still subject to many restrictions.

The island, where tourism accounts for up to 54% of its economy, imposes a requirement that tourists be vaccinated and willing to spend five days in quarantine in one of the five hotels or six boats provided for it.

The opening of Indonesia (with at least 53.6% of the population with the complete vaccination schedule, according to Our World in Data) is more controlled than that of countries like Thailand, which started on February 1 a program without quarantines for vaccinated that forces you to perform several tests in exchange.

And it is that in Thailand it is a vital question; About a fifth of its economy depends on activities related to tourism, whose paralysis contributed to the contraction of 6.1% of the national GDP in 2020, concluding 2021 with a growth of just 1.2%.

In the past two years, at least a quarter of Thai tourism businesses have also closed permanently, according to the country’s Tourism Board.

Without quarantine and with about 70% of its population vaccinated, Thailand has a better prognosis than Indonesia or the Philippines, which opens its doors to international tourism on the 10th with just over half of its population protected and amid renewed efforts to control infections by the omicron option.

no chinese tourists

But no country has it easy without China, the main source of tourists from Southeast Asia and with which bilateral visits grew by 10% per year before the pandemic, according to the China-Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) center, allowing the free entry and exit of its citizens.

“Until China opens, it is going to be very difficult. The region can do little to compensate for the loss of Chinese tourists, since tourism in places like Europe is going to start within the continent, which shares a COVID passport and vaccination levels, ”says Alicia García Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific for Natixis.

“2022 is half lost,” adds García-Herrero, who believes that countries with a high vaccination rate such as Singapore or Malaysia (87% and 78%, respectively), also open, “have more possibilities because it is more business tourism. and services”.

Other places, such as Cambodia, whose close economic ties with China guaranteed the supply of vaccines -becoming with 82% of those inoculated in one of the countries with the highest vaccination rate in the world-, continue to hardly receive international travelers after reopening in November. .

At the moment, Bali, one of the tourist destinations in the region par excellence, received the first international flight in almost two years on Thursday with only twelve passengers on board, six of them foreigners and the rest Indonesians.

A timid start that, without more scheduled arrivals, is feared to be a preview of the slow recovery that awaits the Asean region in general, which seeks to regenerate itself by promoting intra-regional tourism and has launched a new logo in the shape of the sun with ten rays – by its ten members – to persuade future travelers of its “warmth and resilience”.