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Tsunami “not comparable” to 9/11
The tsunami tragedy in the Indian Ocean cannot be compared to September 11 or Sars in terms of its effect on the travel industry.
Speaking at this week’s “Tourism after the Tsunami” debate organised by TravelMole, Geoffrey Lipman, special advisor to the World Tourism Organisation, said it was difficult to compare the Indian Ocean tsunami to September 11 or the Asian Sars crisis because the latter two posed a continued threat in the eyes of holidaymakers, while most see the tsunami as a one off.
Quest Travel managing director Dave Simmons, who was also on the panel, agreed. He said his company was far worse affected by Sars than it has been by the tsunami. “There was greater ongoing concern over Sars, which was considered a man made disaster than the tsunami, something people consider to be a natural one-off event.”
Another member of the panel was PATA UK chairman Tim Robinson. He said that while the two incidents were not comparable, PATA had learnt some useful lessons from the Sars crisis and had put into practice Project Phoenix, the disaster recovery programme it developed in the aftermath of Sars.
Cheapflights.co.uk chief executive David Soskin said traffic on his website of people looking and booking Bangkok was down 10% on the same time last year against an overall increase year-on-year of traffic to the site of 30%. He said Phuket was down 25%; “that’s about as bad as it gets,” he said, although he added that New York was down 40% in the weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Operators were optimistic for a return in bookings. Mr Simmons said: “From what we have seen there is a degree of optimism from the public about the areas affected by the tsunami and I expect we’ll see numbers coming back in around 18 month’s time.”
Explore co-founder Derek Moore was also optimistic: “We have written off this season but three months from now people will start thinking about their autumn break and that is when they will start rebooking.”
This TravelMole Fast Conference was one of a series of fast-paced debates organised by TravelMole and PR and travel marketing firm Rooster. If you’d like to suggest a topic for future debates email [email protected].
The venue for this event was kindly donated by Starwood Hotels and Resorts.
Report by Ginny McGrath
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