Travel in 2022 – how Russia is reshaping the world’s travel industry

Russians were the most visible travellers heading to Thailand post February 1, 2022, when the Thailand Pass Test & Go option was rebooted. Even with its 2 days of pre-booked SHA+ quarantine and PCR tests, along with US$50,000 Covid insurance (which has since been reduced to $20,000), the Russian travelers were delighted to jump on a plane and take the long trip to the much warmer Land of Smiles.

That situation has now radically changed and the world is reverberating to the full impact of Russia’s aggression and the invasion of Ukraine.

Now there’s a mere trickle of daily flights between Russia and either Suvarnabhumi or Phuket in Thailand. Whilst much of the rest of the world have said ’nyet’ to the arrival of any planes from Russia, Thailand is still allowing them to arrive. But even if the planes are still coming (albeit in vastly reduced numbers), the pressure of world sanctions, bans and the plunge of the Russian Ruble has already made the decision for any potential Russian travelers.

Now, the latest data from ForwardKeys, shows that the Russian invasion of Ukraine, now into its 9th day, has prompted an instant spike in flight cancellations to and from Russia, worldwide. On the day after the first tanks rolled into Ukraine, every booking that was made for travel to Russia was outweighed by six cancellations of existing bookings.

Russians escaping their bleak winter and heading to sunnier destinations were suddenly cancelling their trips. The cancellation rates between February 24 – 26 were Cyprus (300%), Egypt (234%), Turkey (153%), the UK (153%), Armenia (200%), and Maldives (165%).

Bookings for March, April and May were already reaching 32% of the pre-Covid levels of travel for outbound Russians. They were heading to Mexico, Seychelles, Eygpt and Maldives. And Thailand.

The outlook for Q3 this year was looking even stronger.

All that Russian travel enthusiasm has now collapsed and, given the harsh economic weapons thrown at Vladimir Putin, his banks, his ‘friends’ and his citizens, any recovery will be a long, long way down the track. Even if there was a swift and unexpected reversal of the Ukraine situation, Russia has already been dealt a fatal economic blow – in just one week the country been turned into a pariah state and much of the rest of the world seems happy to punish the entire country for Putin’s violence.

For countries like the Seychelles, Maldives and Cyprus, Russian arrivals represented a high percentage of their international arrivals. In Thailand that was about 8% of the total tourist mix. And, whilst the Chinese are still in China for at least the rest of this year, the loss of the Russian travel market probably represented an even higher percentage of tourists that won’t be coming to Thailand in 2022.

Sourse - The Thaiger

According to ForwardKeys, before Russia invaded Ukraine, the top twenty destinations most booked by Russian travelers in March, April and May were…. Number one, Turkey, then the UAE, the Maldives, Thailand, Greece, Egypt, Cyprus, Armenia, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Hungary, Bulgaria, Mexico, Spain, Azerbaijan, USA, UK, Qatar, Italy and Uzbekistan.

The world travel industry will be further hit by rising airfares (due to the sharp surge in oil prices), cancellations of routes (across Eastern Europe), a higher resistance to international travel (for perceived safety reasons) and a lingering instability in world politics.

While the Thailand Pass is still seen by many potential travelers as a significant barrier to their choice of Thailand as their next travel destination, and the Russian and Chinese traveler-tap turned off, Thailand’s immediate travel future looks bleak. And this follows nearly 2 years of border closures, false restarts, over-hyped TAT arrival projections and the former Thai tourism workforce heading home to find other work.

The loss of the Russian travelers underscores a critical need for the Thai government to quickly modify the Thailand Pass, or scrap it completely. With so many other factors now making international travel difficult, Thailand will have to rethink their short to medium term tourism strategies to retain its share of the international travel market.

Of course there is no comparison of the humanitarian tragedy underway inside the borders of Ukraine at this time, but Russia’s aggression will likely have much more long-term, and far-reaching, effects than the clear and present danger it poses on the Ukranian nation right now.

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Lockdown Collapsed #Thailand’s lucrative sex-industry

The black leather party masks that performers May and Som wear for their fetish shows in Bangkok are definitely not the sort to stop the corona-virus.

Behind closed doors, they practise for the day when health restrictions are lifted and tourists return, but they have no idea when and worry that the city’s infamous Patpong red-light district could be very different by then.

“This kind of place will be the last to reopen,” said May 31. Like Som, she goes only by her Thai nickname.

“Even when it does reopen, customers will be worried about their safety,” she said at the BarBar club on Patpong’s Soi 2 street. BarBar and other clubs such as “Bada Bing” and “Fresh Boys” are shuttered and the nights are largely silent.

Thailand shut bars and clubs in mid-March as corona-virus cases surged. It halted international passenger flights, stopping the tourism that had made Bangkok the world’s most visited city for four years.

Patpong went dark.

But residents say the decline had already begun for a red-light district that flourished in the 1970s as a rest stop for U.S. forces in Indochina.

“This COVID-19 is an accelerant of change,” said Michael Ernst, an Austrian 25-year veteran of the district and former bar owner who opened the Patpong Museum weeks before the new corona-virus reached Thailand.

“The go-go bar and its very one-dimensional concept of a stage and ladies dancing on it with a number. I think that’s already over, they just don’t know that yet.”

SHIFT

The number of go-go bars in Patpong district has waned in recent years as business has moved to other parts of Bangkok or online and as sex tourism has become a smaller part of the overall tourism industry for Thailand.

For decades, tourism figures were skewed towards men. But the growing importance of Chinese visitors in particular changed that. In 2018, more than 53 percent of tourists were women.

Nonetheless, Patpong’s nightlife district employed thousands of people, mostly young women. Most are now among the 2 million Thais the state planning agency believes may be made unemployed this year because of the impact of the virus.

BarBar is still paying some workers. But the manager of at least one go-go bar on Soi 2 just abandoned the lease.

Patpong had never known it as bad, said 70-year-old Pratoomporn Somritsuk, who for 35 years has run the Old Other Office drinking den.

“A lot of ladies here working in nightlife are mostly from a poor family or upcountry,” she said. “They have no chance to go work in a company.”

The lockdown has meant the whole sex industry has collapsed. Online escort service Smooci said activity in Bangkok fell to 10 percent in April.

Thailand has now begun to lift some movement restrictions with infections at over 3,000 and deaths nearly 60, but neither rising rapidly. There is talk of tourism resuming.

But a health ministry spokesman said that nightlife venues would be among the last to reopen.

“In the new normal, Patpong will have to adapt a lot. It may end up looking different, but this change will be for the better,” Rungruang Kitpati said.

Social distancing and the sex industry are hard to make compatible, however.

“I can provide alcohol gel or temperature checks,” said 38-year-old Jittra Nawamawat, one of BarBar’s founders. “But staying one metre apart is impossible.” – Reuters

Source - Bangkok Jack