Airlines flying from Thailand to South Korea are facing significant booking cancellations as the Mers scare deepens.
Bookings by outbound Thai travellers have reportedly plummeted as much as 80% over the past two weeks as fear over the outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome spreads across Asia.
Some travel agents have seen their South Korea-bound tour packages and airline ticket sales dwindle at an alarming rate.
"The pattern we've seen in the past two weeks is the progression of postponement [of bookings] to cancellation," Nawinee Hengnalen, general manager of BuyNow Co, the general sales agent for South Korean budget carrier T'way Airlines, said yesterday.
"Few Thais want to go to South Korea any more due to Mers," she told the Bangkok Post, noting that bookings for air tickets alone had fallen by 70-80%.
A Thailand-based official of the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) yesterday acknowledged the sharp decline in Thai outbound travel to South Korea but conservatively estimated a drop of 30%.
Interestingly, medical profession groups from Thailand have reacted the most strongly to the Mers epidemic by completely halting their visits to South Korea, Ms Nawinee said.
Mers, which initially caused flight bookings to South Korea to plummet, is now having an even greater effect as a wave of cancellations spreads across Asia, according to figures from travel analyst website ForwardKeys.com.
The website, owned by Spanish company Forward Data, monitors future travel patterns by analysing 14 million reservation transactions a day.
“The Mers outbreak is having a truly dramatic impact on travel to and within Asia, as cancellations to South Korea are spreading worldwide, and in Asia in the week of June 6-12 there have been more cancellations than bookings,” chief executive Olivier Jager said.
In that week, net bookings — total bookings made minus cancellations — fell by 188% from East Asia and 131% from the rest of Asia. Net bookings from all other continents fell by more than 60%.
For June, net future bookings fell by just over 40% in the week of June 13, and now the first week of July has 3% fewer net bookings than in the year-earlier period.
