Source::AP
They are the annual journeys of late winter and early spring: Factory workers in China heading home for the Lunar New Year; American college students going on road trips and hitting the beach over spring break; Germans and Britons fleeing drab skies for some Mediterranean sun over Easter.
All of it canceled, in doubt or under pressure because of the coronavirus.
Amid fears of new variants of the virus, new restrictions on movement have hit just as people start to look ahead to what is usually a busy time of year for travel.
returning.“The overall prospects of a rebound in 2021 seem to have worsened,” the organisation said.
Thailand, where about a tenth of the population depends on tourism for its livelihood, requires a two-week quarantine for foreigners at designated hotels costing about $1,000 and up. So far, only a few dozen people a day are opting to visit. Tourist arrivals fell to under 7 million in Thailand in 2020 and are forecast to reach only 10 million this year from 40 million in 2019.
Indonesia’s resort island of Bali has deported dozens of foreigners and began restricting foreign arrivals on January 1 as its coronavirus caseload has exceeded one million.
Gerasimos Bakogiannis, owner of the Portes Palace hotel in Potidaia in Greece's northern Halkidiki region, said he is not even opening for Western Easter on April 4 but will wait a month for Greek Orthodox Easter on May 2 — and, he hopes, the start of a better summer.
“If this year is like last year, tourism will be destroyed,” he said.
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