Asian travel shows sharp rebound: Abacus

Asian travel shows sharp rebound: Abacus

Agence France-Presse, Singapore

Air travel in Asia is recovering sharply from the SARS outbreak in the March-May period, with more than 3.5 million bookings made in August from slightly above one million in April, booking service Abacus International said on Thursday.

For travel within the region, bookings made through Abacus were up almost 50 percent on the year, chief executive Don Birch told journalists at a regional tourism conference.

The Abacus figures showed the sector has "categorically recovered from SARS," Birch said.

"Our message here is that the travel industry is resilient, people want to travel ... of course we are impacted by the health issues or security issues but they do adapt and they do travel," he said.

Based in Singapore, Abacus is the region's largest integrated air ticketing and booking company with more than 9,000 agency locations handling travel arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region.

The recovery now underway is expected to extend into 2004 with economic indicators for the region showing an upswing in business activity, Birch said.

"The point here is that travel is a very close cousin of economic activity ... all the indicators are that the economy ... is recovering and that we will see some return of growth over the next year or two," Birch said.

The flu-like Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic infected more than 8,000 people and left nearly 800 dead in 32 countries, with most of the fatalities and infections in East Asia.

More than seven million jobs, mostly in the travel and tourism sectors, were lost and at least US$30 billion were wiped off economic growth estimates this year as a result of the outbreak, according to one industry estimate.

The Pacific Asia Travel Association recently predicted the sector should return to aggregate annual growth rates of four to six percent during 2004.