Travel gets better, but Iraq and SARS aftermath still a drawback

The overall outcomes of world tourism have definitely improved over the last four months. However, the WTO World Travel Gauge notes that even though demand for many destinations is pointing to a straightforward rebound, a longer time is needed to get over the damage caused by the war in Iraq and the severe and acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Amid this situation, Latin America is doing the rest of the planet one better.

In keeping with the analysis published in the second issue of the WTO World Travel Gauge and presented in the 15th Meeting of the WTO General Assembly in Beijing a few days ago, trends continue sending out mixed signals. In those world regions hit hardest by the two crises, the rekindling process is taking much longer.

In the first four months of the year, the upshots of travel activity were tarnished by the conflict in Iraq and by the SARS outbreak from April on. As tourists were little by little regaining confidence at the end of the war, travel fears flared up on the heels of the terror attacks in Riad, Casablanca, Jakarta and Bombay.

”Nonetheless, these attacks had less ripple effects than anticipated because people are seemingly getting used to live in an unsafe world,” said Augusto Huescar, head of the Center for Studies on Market and Promotional Techniques at the WTO.

According to statistics related to the number of arrivals in over a hundred countries, most of these travel destinations have made significant progress in overcoming the consequences of both SARS and the war in Iraq. The nearly 140 members of the WTO Expert Team concluded there were clear signs of recovery looming in the horizon and they were really upbeat about the rest of 2003.

Their growth previsions were swaying from “no change at all to better than reasonably expected.” In a scale of one to five, the group benchmarked an average 3.6 for the next four months. Forecasts for Asia and the Pacific Basin have bettered dramatically (4.0), so have the estimates for Africa and the Middle East (3.8 in both cases).

According to the WTO Expert Team, the numbers will be in the black in the last quarter of 2003 thanks in part to a rebounding world economy that has seen the U.S. staging a comeback in recent months. The group explains that at the end of the war in Iraq and once the SARS outbreak was long gone, a bleak economy went on to be the main hurdle that held back travel recovery worldwide.

”Some major markets are still suffering from a slowdown in the number of arrivals as the pressure of consumers seeking a more balanced quality-price ratio is putting the heat on the competition between destinations and companies,” Mr. Huescar noted.

Despite certain improvements following the war in Iraq and the SARS outbreak, North America still has a long way to go before regaining the lost ground. Between January and July, America was 7 percent below the levels picked in the same span of time of 2002. Canada, severely affected by SARS-related travel warnings issued in late April, dropped a couple of digits in every month since then, especially in May. Now the country is wrapping up the year with a bedrock bottom 15 percent plunge.

Mexico got fired up again after being pummeled hard by dwindling numbers of American travelers during the Iraq War and posted good digits in both June and July. However, the Aztec nation then faced an 8 percent piled-up loss until August.

The picture is much clearer in the rest of the region since most travel destinations in the Caribbean, as well as in Central and South America, are putting on positive numbers –even twice as much positive in some cases. Trading on a weaker greenback that makes most destinations el cheapo for European and Canadian travelers, and coupled with a massive move out of Asia in the wake of SARS, the Caribbean has proved it’s absolutely coming out of the woods after a year 2002 in the red.

Some of the top destinations made it somewhat big, like the Dominican Republic (up 20 percent), Cuba (up 14 percent) and Jamaica (7 percent), while Puerto Rico (up 3 percent) and the Bahamas, with a 2 percent increase, also did it right.

In the same breath, Central and South America managed to keep the ball rolling after an initial rebound in the first quarter of 2003. As political and economic stability in the region’s major sending markets got better, especially in Argentina and Brazil, other nations like Chile, Peru, Uruguay and Ecuador followed suit.

Argentina, a country that got the most of a competitive edge in prices, kept on steering steadily out of the storm and chalked up a staggering 27 percent surge in arrivals at its main airports and seaports between January and July.