Gary Bowerman Quoted in 3 Skift Articles

This week, Check-in Asia’s Gary Bowerman was interviewed by acclaimed travel industry portal Skift for three in-depth articles.

The first focused on the concept of “travel bubbles”, the second on India’s potential role in the post-COVID-19 tourism order, and the third piece addressed whether Maldives may become a desirable reboot destination for Asia travellers.

Gary’s comments for each piece are listed below, together with links to the full article.

Who Will Come Last in Global Travel’s Staged Recovery?

This article addressed the rise of the “travel bubble,” and the prospect that the global tourism recovery is looking a lot more uneven than previously expected.

—– Gary Bowerman, a tourism and consumer analyst focused on Asia, recently wrote about how travel’s rebound is going to become an “entrenched political issue.”

“Most countries are watching each other at the moment and trying to see who moves first, and I think Australia and New Zealand are probably a better place to do that, because they are more remote island nations and they are able to open up between them,” Bowerman told Skift. “How that goes forward for the rest of the world we’ll need to see. I think a lot of the initial moves will come from Asia Pacific just because the virus was here first.”

“We really don’t know at the moment whether consumers are going to feel comfortable traveling long haul on a long flight.”

In addition to its past learnings from SARS and MERS, Bowerman notes, there is also a higher level of trust and closer ties between nations in the region, and governments broadly displayed competency in the crisis relative to other regions of the world. Inter-Asia leisure and business travel is higher now than it was during SARS, meaning a regional comeback would be meaningful even if long-haul travel is still a long way off.

“We really don’t know at the moment what’s going to happen with long haul travel … we don’t know whether consumers are going to feel comfortable traveling long haul on long flights,” Bowerman said. “This move we’re seeing in some countries is to open up first to domestic travel and see how that goes, perhaps look at the options of regional travel bubbles or regional strategic partnerships — I think that’s what we’re going to see, certainly for a few months.” —–

Read the full article here

Where Is India Outbound Tourism in Asia’s Post-Pandemic Recovery Order?

While much of the global tourism discussion during COVID-19 has focused on China, this article argues that India assert a greater influence in the coming months and years…

—– While it’s clear that India was already a coveted tourist source market for several Asia Pacific destinations prior to coronavirus, Kuala Lumpur-based tourism analyst Gary Bowerman thinks what the pandemic opens up is an unprecedented chance for India to use its outbound tourism as a strategic tool in post-crisis recovery.

“I think we’ll see a much more strategically aggressive India in the aftermath of the virus, largely because a lot of Western nations will scrupulously review their relations with China.”

“I think we’ll see a much more strategically aggressive India in the aftermath of the virus, largely because a lot of Western nations will scrupulously review their relations with China,” he said.

India, constrained by its own political structure, had been less active in engaging with other countries besides its immediate neighbors, he added, which contrasted with China’s aggressive push into Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, among others, through its Belt and Road Initiative.

“India has a lot of cards to play in the coming months, and tourism may be one of them.”

However, the widespread global anger with China for its early-stage management of coronavirus, and how it has used tourism as a political tool in the past, may come back to bite the country, Bowerman remarked.

Herein, he added, lies the “opportunity” for India to step up its engagement with regional neighbors as well as Europe and the United States.

“India has a lot of cards to play in the coming months, and tourism may be one of them,” said Bowerman. —–

Read the full article here

When You Don’t Have Any Domestic Tourism to Rely On: Maldives as a Pandemic Case Study

This article addressed the challenges and opportunities for Maldives as Asian travellers seek safe destinations for post-lockdown travel.

—– Gary Bowerman, director of tourism intelligence and marketing for Check-in Asia, on the other hand, expressed skepticism about the scale and scope of Chinese outbound travel this year owing to the extreme caution the Chinese government would go to prevent a second wave of infection. “The Maldives is also a fairly long flight from China, and I wonder if the first wave of [Chinese] post-pandemic out-bounders will select shorter air trips,” he said. —–

Read the full article here

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