Commentary: Destinations should turn to Muslim tourists to plug the gap in Chinese arrivals
This commentary is written by Hannah Pearson, Director of Pear Anderson, a boutique tourism consultancy specialising in Muslim tourism, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
As I write this on Monday morning, it seems that en-masse COVID-19 infections outside of China are coming thick and fast - 602 cases in South Korea, 76 in Italy, and 28 in Iran, according to the WHO Feb 23 situation report. China is still suffering with 77,042 cases. In short, it’s a gloomy picture to start the week.
The doom continues into even gloomier territories once we start looking at the tourism statistics that have been put out there over the past few weeks: the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has warned airlines may lose $29.3 billion in 2020 (with $27.8 billion of that in APAC alone), Oxford Economics put out an analysis that there will be a $22 billion loss in Chinese outbound tourism spending in best case scenarios, a $73 billion loss in their downside scenarios.
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Hannah Pearson