Continued problems for the tourism sector
Amid the coronavirus crisis tourism sector around the world is facing many setbacks.
A group of US senators, for example, have urged major US airlines to start repaying customers with refunds rather than credit vouchers. They says they have a ‘moral responsibility’ to do so, having secured billions in taxpayers’ money to bail them out.
“We believe your company has a moral responsibility to provide real refunds, not travel vouchers, to consumers, and to support State Department efforts to repatriate any American citizens trying to come home,” the nine senators said in a letter to the CEOs of 11 airlines.
“Americans need money now to pay for basic necessities, not temporary credits towards future travel,” they wrote.
The lawmakers want the airlines to publicly disclose ‘the total value’ of all travel vouchers and credits issued and the total number flights they have cancelled.
Airlines are also facing heat over the issue in Canada.
A class action lawsuit was filed against Swoop, WestJet, Air Canada, Air Transat and Sunwing for a refusal to issue refunds.
It is even more interesting as the IATA CEO and director general Alexandre de Juniac has written an open letter to travel agents. He wrote about the ‘dark days’ for the industry and explicitly urged the regulators to ease requirements for cash refunds and allow airlines to issue vouchers instead.
In Mexico, Volaris, the ultra-low-cost airline, is obliged to make an additional capacity reduction to that which was advised on March 24, 2020. Capacity measured by available seat miles for the month of April, 2020 will reduce to approximately 80% of total operation versus the schedule originally published.
In Europe, Spanish tourism GDP is expected to drop 32.4% in 2020, compared to last year. It will reflect in the loss of 54,733 million euros.
Far East also needs to adapt. Japan Airlines is making additional cuts to its flight schedules for this month. The carrier announced it will trim about 85% of international services until April 30, 2020. It had already said it was reducing schedules by 77%.
JAL will continue flying key long haul routes to North America and Europe but with much reduced frequencies.
The tourism and hospitality in India also suffered at an astonishing pace. Travel and tourism accounts for 9.2% of India’s GDP (2018), and the tourism sector generated 26.7 million jobs in that year. Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTA) has been found to be down by about 67% annually in the January-March quarter, while domestic tourists notched a much lower figure by about 40%.
MMP
photo: Pixabay
