Travel Retail Airways: Hitting heavy turbulence “How the crisis will develop, let alone culminate, is deeply uncertain. Often in the face of such seismic political events, it seems unduly parochial, even banal, to consider the travel retail repercussions, though that is of course our job. And on that pure commercial level, it is clear that the damage to Hong Kong’s tourism industry and all related sectors such as travel retail is going to be severe in the weeks, and perhaps months, to come.” |
CHINA (HONG KONG). ForwardKeys has produced new research indicating the severe impact that ongoing protests in Hong Kong are having on bookings made from Asian countries to the special administrative region.
As reported, initial research by ForwardKeys suggested that bookings made 16 June-13 July were down -5.4% compared to the same period in 2017. However, as the protests have turned increasingly violent, bookings from Asian markets to Hong Kong plummeted -33.4% in the following period from 14 July-9 August. This has resulted in a -20.2% fall in bookings for the whole period 16 June-9 August.
There is now clear evidence that the protests have sharply reversed a positive travel trend in which bookings for the first six and a half months of the year were up +6.6% on 2018.
ForwardKeys Spokesperson David Tarsh commented: “The situation in Hong Kong has deteriorated substantially in the past eight weeks and particularly so in the past four. During June and early July, ForwardKeys saw no decline in long-haul bookings to Hong Kong; however, that is no longer the case. From 16 June to 9 August, long-haul bookings to Hong Kong are now -4.7% down on the equivalent period last year.”
The latest ForwardKeys figures don’t take account of recent days, which have seen the protests spread to Hong Kong International Airport itself. As reported, the airport was, in the early evening today (13 August), forced to cancel all of the day’s remaining flights for the second day in a row.
Tarsh added: “ForwardKeys’ latest numbers do not yet include the events of Monday, when all flights were cancelled and video of police clearing protestors from the airport were beamed around the world, so ForwardKeys is not optimistic about reporting a recovery in the immediate future.”
