Fiji in, Hong Kong out: Asian tourism seen struggling until 2024

Fiji, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Maldives top index of destinations best placed to revive pandemic-battered tourism. Fiji, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Maldives are in the strongest position to revive their pandemic-battered tourism industries among Asia Pacific destinations, while Hong Kong has the worst prospects due to its restrictive border policies, a new report says. “A combination of broader and more effective vaccination coverage and greater reliance on tourism have lent themselves to less restrictive travel policies,” the EIU said in its report released on Wednesday. Northeast Asian economies, which are less reliant on tourism, have been slower to reopen, the report said, predicting China and its territories of Hong Kong and Macau would stick with their strict “dynamic zero COVID” policies at least for 2022. “If you look at Europe and North America, even during the pandemic, they opened and closed during the summer seasons, so in 2020 and 2021, Europe was open for travel.” The EIU said tourism in the region, with the exception of Fiji and the Maldives, would likely not recover to pre-pandemic levels until at least 2024, largely as a result of China’s restrictive border policies.