The Vietnam Administration of Tourism has started to estimate the losses caused by the new coronavirus (nCoV) epidemic and drawn up three scenarios to cope with the drop-off in the tourism sector as the epidemic evolves with uncertainty.

Photo: N. Binh/Tuoi Tre.

Under the first scenario, the epidemic is expected to end by the end of March and as a result, tourism promotional activities are planned to be launched in April.

In this case, the tourism industry may promote domestic travel, which usually starts peaking from the end of May while tour operators can promote outbound tourism to offset the economic loss since the beginning of this year.

In the second scenario, foreign tourists would not come massively to Vietnam until June. To take full advantage of the peak season between October 2020 and April 2021 and recover from the downturn, promotion activities in Vietnam and abroad need to be enhanced in the months from April to September this year.

The last scene envisages the possibility that not until the fourth quarter of this year would the tourism be buoyant again as some world health experts predicted that the nCoV epidemic only rolls back by the end of 2020’s summer.

In this case, all promotional activities to stimulate the domestic tourism activities would be in difficulties due to time pressure. However, that of outbound tourism promotion may be implemented to revive the market rapidly.

In its strategy to diversify the tourist market, the National Administration of Tourism said that it would focus on regional markets with convenient flight routes and rapid growth pace such as South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and ASEAN.

Besides, the sector would focus on potential markets such as the Indian one as with a population of over a billion, it is expected to compensate the loss from the closure of the Chinese market.

As the epidemic emerges, a series of travel companies have suffered losses of dozens millions of US dollars in a short time due to cancellations of inbound tours, especially those from China, the most valuable inbound visitor market to Vietnam.