While more companies shed jobs, the latest being TripAdvisor which cut some 900 jobs this week, some countries in Asia Pacific (APAC) are taking tentative steps to restart their economies and save jobs, and the long weekend coming up, and subsequent weeks after, will be watched closely by the rest of the world.
In South Korea, flights from Gimpo to Jeju, the holiday island, are full and accommodation booked out this weekend. Checking with sources in Seoul, airlines are not practising social distancing inflight but there will be various temperature checks at airports and by airlines, “so you do have to go through these multiple times during your journey”.
Whether this spurt in domestic travel will result in a second wave of infections in a country that’s been applauded for effective containment, no one knows – but if it passes with minimal outbreaks, it holds hope for a slow road to economic recovery at least on the home front.
As Younghoon Kang, manager Korea for McKinsey noted in our WiT Virtual last week, in its survey measuring consumer sentiment, Koreans are now more concerned about the economy and their financial circumstances than the coronavirus.
Hong Kong, which has also done an effective containment, being one of the first to introduce its own form of restrictions even before Chinese New Year, has had five consecutive days of zero infections, and the industry is hopeful this may lead to an easing of some restrictions on local life.
Not that Hong Kong has had the kind of “lockdowns” being seen in places such as Singapore (called Circuit Breaker) or Malaysia. Jennifer Cronin, president of Wharf Hotels Group, calls it “half a lifestyle”.
Her hotels are open, her corporate office is open and every day 55 associates stream in to work. Restaurants have remained open except you cannot sit more than four people at one table. “So we have taken 50% of capacity out at our restaurants, bars remain closed. Department stores have remained open with reduced hours,” said Cronin speaking from her office in Hong Kong today.
Weddings are being held but again no more than four at a table are allowed, but most have been postponed. Her hotel is hosting small meetings – no more than five in a room. “We are equipping these rooms with more tech capabilities to allow for hybrid events”.
Given its “half a lifestyle” model, Cronin believes Hong Kong serves as a good benchmark for other hotel companies around the world to restart. “We are already operating in the future, as it were. This is how we will have to operate in the short to medium term, with our restaurants, rooms and meeting spaces.”
It has had talks with its Global Alliance Hotel members and shared best practices. “What are the steps we need to take? We have had simple questions from ‘how do you handle health declaration forms’ to ‘should we have thermal scanners’ which we now have? Countries like the US are grappling with this.
“Hong Kong and China are being seen as test cases and best practices.”
Its hotel Marco Polo Wuhan was in the eye of the storm and housed 300 emergency personnel for two months, and it did not have one case of Covid-19 in the hotel, nor among its 5,000 associates across the group.
Said Cronin, “We are hopeful there will be easing of restrictions by mid-May, schools going back in phases and border travel allowed for essential services – for example, factories that need to start work to keep the supply chain going.”
She said the next stage is for “Covid-safe bubbles” like Hong Kong and China or Australia and New Zealand to open borders to each other, which would enable tourism in Hong Kong to restart, given its lack of a domestic or drive market.
In China, news that the government will hold its highest-profile annual political meeting in on May 22 is being welcomed by the industry. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress has set the date for the event which the government uses to announce its annual growth target, defence spending projections and other key policy decisions.
In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has also confirmed that talks are currently underway with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to allow travel to and from both countries in the near future.
Australia’s chief medical officer, Dr Brendan Murphy, has made a series of recommendations to the government about how certain social and travel restrictions could be rolled back within weeks.
According to this report, his recommendations include keeping the nation’s borders closed for at least another three to four months; discouraging Australian from leaving the country except for “exceptional circumstances”, and that small gatherings could be allowed by May 11.
In WiT Virtual this week, Louise Daley, deputy CEO of Accor, Asia Pacific, also outlines a roadmap to recovery for hospitality. Download the recording here – we recommend it. One viewer described it as “a refreshing and insightful conversation that was different from what every other piece of content is in the world right now”.
And so begins the long march back to restarting travel.
Note: The full recording to Jennifer Cronin’s interview will be available on The WiT Podcast coming out next week.
• Featured image credit: ONYXprj/Getty Image
