“Along with Golden Week (October) and the Summer school holidays, is one of only a few periods when Chinese tourists and their families can take long trips (4+ days) within China or internationally. “The highlights an important risk to Chinese travel-related companies: that yet another important holiday period could effectively be lost to COVID-19,” logistics and transport research firm Tracking Traffic wrote in a note distributed on the Smartkarma platform. The Financial Times newspaper reported that some of these incentives include cash gifts, additional streaming credits for mobile phones and free entry to local tourist attractions.Īs a result, many people have cancelled their trips, according to media reports. At their destination, travellers are also required to quarantine themselves at home.īut many employers are doing their bit to encourage staff to stay in the cities and work through the holiday. People travelling across provinces must undergo multiple tests, both before departure and on arrival. To rein in the spike, authorities have adopted a carrot-and-stick approach. The number of new coronavirus infections surged in mid-January to their highest in more than 10 months, most of them in China’s north and near the capital, Beijing. About 95 percent of those trips usually take place by road and rail, with planes and boats making up the rest. That represents a 20 percent decrease from 2020, and a more-than-60-percent slump compared with 2019. But the 2021 version of it, stretching from January 28 to March 8, is likely to be much smaller than those of previous years.Ĭhina’s Ministry of Transport estimates that people will make about 1.15 billion trips during this year’s Lunar New Year. Many analysts expect sales this holiday season to be better than last year, but still far below what they were in 2019.Ĭhina’s annual mass migration is usually a spectacle. For the same two months last year, that figure had plunged by 20.5 percent. In many Asian economies and industries, the Spring Festival is the most lucrative time of the year as people splurge on expensive dinners and presents.Ĭhina’s retail sales in the first two months of 2019 – the period that included the Spring Festival – stood at 6.6 trillion yuan ($1 trillion). Shops and restaurants in Shanghai face a bleak Lunar New Year, and a giant fish going by While many will miss being with their families at this cherished time of year, the latest developments are also crushing large parts of the economy, in particular travel, hospitality or any other sector that relies on face-to-face contact with customers. Last year, as China grappled with the emergence of a then-unknown respiratory virus, city workers who had gone to their rural hometowns for the holiday were left stranded there as authorities suddenly imposed travel restrictions to control the spread of the disease.Īfter largely bringing COVID-19 under control at home, a jump in cases last month prompted Chinese authorities to encourage migrant workers to stay in the cities and near their workplaces, reducing what is usually the world’s largest annual migration of people to a trickle. Malaysia, as with many other places, has seen a surge in coronavirus cases in recent months, resulting in a return to lockdowns and travel restrictions.Īnd in China, the world’s second-largest economy, a recent spike in cases is inadvertently proving to be something of a positive for its factories, but adding to the pain of its travel and retail industries, as well as many of its people. “Why bother? Who’s going to come?” was his succinct reply. While chatting the other evening with my ethnic Chinese neighbour I asked him whether he was going to be giving his home the annual spruce-up. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Across many parts of Asia, and among Asian diaspora beyond the region, families are normally busy around this time of year repainting and spring cleaning their homes to prepare for visits by family members or buying oranges and festive cookies, all to get set for the Lunar New Year celebrations.īut as with most things that COVID-19 has touched, this Lunar New Year – which falls on Friday – is turning out to be anything but normal for many individuals and companies, for a second consecutive year.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |