While opening borders to tourism may be months away for some countries, many ASEAN nations are resuming domestic travel and hospitality services for local tourists.

 

Hotel and Restaurant Association of the Philippines chair Eugene T. Yap said the country had created a local travel bubble program that had opened 10 destinations to domestic tourists, with strict health protocols in place.

 

“If opening local tourism is successful, then international tourists will be more confident about coming to ASEAN countries,” he said during a webinar hosted by Sahid University in Indonesia recently.

 

“We need to reopen our businesses and find solutions to deal with the effects of COVID-19. There is no use to sitting down and hoping that this pandemic will be gone,” added Yap, who is also president of the ASEAN Hotel and Restaurant Association.

 

Thailand Hotel Association president Supawan Tanomkieatipum said that the Thai government was subsidizing 40 percent of local tourists’ expenses, including hotel fares, to help the travel industry recover.

 

“As soon as we see local travel recover, we would like the Thai government to join an intra-ASEAN travel bubble,” she said, adding that the tourist industry in Thailand had experienced an 89 percent decline in both tourist arrivals and income from tourism.

 

The Indonesian tourism industry has also struggled during the pandemic. It has lost an estimated Rp 85 trillion (US$5.87 billion) in tourism revenue so far this year. Of this figure, the hotel and restaurant industry has lost nearly Rp 70 trillion in revenue, while aviation and tour operators have lost Rp 15 trillion in revenue.

 

The tourism sector is currently eligible for a 30 percent discount on corporate income tax to cushion the impact of the pandemic.

 

Indonesian Hotel and Restaurant Association (PHRI) chair Hariyadi Sukamdani said that domestic tourists made up 91 percent of total tourists last year and had made up 96 percent of total visitors during the pandemic.

 

“There is great market potential with domestic tourists,” he said at the event. “However, their confidence in traveling is still low. I believe demand for travel will rebound once the government can handle the pandemic better and once a vaccine becomes available.”

 

Hariyadi quoted a survey from online travel agency Traveloka that showed that 71 percent of people felt it would be safe to travel in October. Only 21 percent of people surveyed said they felt safe traveling in July.

 

According to the Foreign Ministry, tourist arrivals in Southeast Asia are down 48 percent as a result of the pandemic. This has affected more than 100 million jobs.

The ministry’s ASEAN economic cooperation director, Berlianto Situngkir, said that member countries were considering creating a travel corridor to facilitate business travel.

 

“The foreign minister will discuss the ASEAN travel bubble for international travelers sometime around September,” he said, adding that some destinations in Indonesia were already open to domestic travelers.

 

Indonesia is also finalizing a travel corridor agreement with the United Arab Emirates to facilitate “essential business trips” between the two countries.

 

The government recently announced that it would reopen Banyuwangi, East Java, and the island of Bali to local tourists in the first week of August, as part of the government’s effort to gradually revive tourism and the aviation sector.

 

However, Southeast Asia has seen a rising number of COVID-19 cases.

 

On Monday, Indonesia reported that it had exceeded 100,000 cases, with the capital reporting its highest one-day spike since the city’s first cases were confirmed in March.

 

Meanwhile, Manila and the Vietnamese city of Danang have seen surges in COVID-19 cases. The cases in Danang were the first recorded instances of community infection since April, according to Reuters.