SARS cost Asia 7m jobs, but is recovering: PATA

SARS cost Asia 7m jobs, but is recovering: PATA

Agence France-Presse, Bangkok

The SARS crisis cost Asian economies over seven million jobs and
slashed at least US$30 billion off growth estimates this year but
effects on the worst-hit countries should be short-lived, a
travel association said on Thursday.

Asia's tourism and travel industry was ravaged by Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which prompted a plunge in travel in
the region earlier this year, dampening the economies.

"The spin-off effects were horrendous," Peter de Jong,
president of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), said in
a speech, citing statistics that China, Hong Kong, Singapore and
Vietnam will lose almost three million front-line tourism
industry jobs.

"And if we factor in the indirect component, that figure more
than doubles to seven million jobs lost in those four
destinations alone," de Jong told a three-day global tourism
conference here.

Indirect job losses brought on by SARS were widespread in
service industries and hit everyone from restaurant staff to
drinking water suppliers and air conditioner producers, according
to PATA, the recognized authority on Pacific Asia travel and
tourism.

In May, the World Travel and Tourism Council reported that 25
percent of China's tourism industry earnings would be lost, along
with a total of 2.8 million industry jobs, or one-fifth of the
country's total industry employment.

Load levels on Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific collapsed from one
million per month to just over 200,000 in May, and the company
teetered on the edge of bankruptcy before recovering to 90
percent levels in August.

He stressed, however, that Asia's resilient tourism industry
was already bouncing back and reaching performance levels similar
to last year's.

Updated forecasts for the destinations hit hardest by the SARS
pandemonium indicate that the consequences will be relatively
short-lived.

"Most flows will have returned to normal by the end of this
year," de Jong said. "All in all we expect a return to aggregate
annual growth rates of around 4.0 to 6.0 percent during 2004."

He pointed to better-than-expected recoveries under way in
Singapore and Hong Kong, where travel had dropped off the charts
due to SARS fears.

Singapore's arrivals in May contracted by a stunning 70
percent but the island nation reported that in the last week of
August, international arrivals were just 6 percent behind the
same period last year.

Its hotel occupancy rates have also surged back to 69 percent,
nearly reaching the 2002 average of 70 percent, de Jong said.

In Hong Kong, where May arrivals declined 68 percent, tourist
numbers in July climbed back over the million mark for the first
time since March to be also just six percent behind the same
period in 2002.

PATA stressed that with Asia-Pacific generating almost 60
percent of global tourism demand, governments in the region
should do more to protect and expand their countries' tourism
industries.

The region has seen astronomical tourism growth, hosting
almost 280 million international visitor arrivals in 2002
compared with 152 million in 1990 and 70 million in 1980.