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.