SOUTH Korea’s failure to contain the MERS outbreak has caused Asia to go on high alert, with scores of travellers cancelling flights to South Korea and authorities taking precautions to prevent its spread.
Governments throughout the region are already cautioning citizens about travel to South Korea, including Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and Indonesia, where travel advisories have already been issued.
Taiwan’s health authorities have widened their travel alert to cover all of South Korea, saidReuters, while Japan, Vietnam and Cambodia are boosting monitoring and screening of inbound passengers from South Korea.
Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not warned against visits to South Korea, but the Singapore Hotel Association has advised its members to stay vigilant.
With tour cancellations from China expected to fall by 20 per cent at the very least, airlines are currently bearing the brunt of the fallout.
China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are the top three source markets having made flight cancellations to South Korea between January 1 and June 5 this year, according to ForwardKeys research.
Bookings in Hong Kong have collapsed by 102 per cent over the same period last year, Taiwan tumbled 83 per cent and China down 72 per cent.
Taiwan’s two biggest airlines have halved the number of flights to South Korea from mid-June to end-July, citing falling travel demand to the country.
Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways are waiving cancellation fees and administration fees for refund, rebooking or re-routing for customers holding confirmed tickets to and from Seoul, reported Channel NewsAsia.
Stewart Hunter, director of APAC, Sojern, which collates travel data internationally, said regional airlines are “bracing themselves for a potential downturn in demand for flights to Seoul”.
“Sojern’s data…shows some significant fluctuations of intent for inbound travel to South Korea: when looking at the start of June when the first deaths from MERS were reported, we observed a week-on-week 30 to 40 per cent decline in the volume of travellers showing intent to travel to South Korea from Japan and Hong Kong.”
However, Stewart added: “Volume has since rebounded significantly in Japan and Hong Kong along with other countries in the region.”
As of press time, there are 126 confirmed cases of MERS in South Korea, where the disease has claimed 10 lives.
