Fires have limited impact on outbound tours to Down Under

Singapore

OUTBOUND travel operators in Singapore have largely seen limited impact from the escalating Australian fires on tours Down Under, as January and February have traditionally been the lull season for Singaporeans heading south.

Most travel industry players contacted by The Business Times (BT) said they have yet to see any significant changes to tour bookings or flights to Australia compared to last year.

"Demand for travel to Australia for Chinese New Year 2020 is currently on track to meeting that of 2019 with a two-week-plus window for last minute bookings, possibly incentivised by the favourable all-time low of the Australian dollar," said Chan Brothers Travel's head of marketing communications Jane Chang.

CTC Travel and ASA Holidays told BT demand for their January and February tours to Australia remain roughly the same year-on-year.

Meanwhile, Farmosa Holiday and another tour agency, which prefers to be anonymous, told BT they generally have not seen much demand for travel to Australia.

The operators were responding to enquiries from BT, after massive evacuations of tourists were carried out as bushfires blazed more than 14 million acres of land across Australia.

The tourist-popular New South Wales has taken the worst hit, as it declared a state of emergency on Jan 2, including an unprecedented "tourist leave zone" for 14,000 square kilometres.

Even though there has been no last-minute cancellations, ASA Holidays noted a drop in enquiries in recent days. While it could be due to the raging fires Down Under, Shannon Hee, marketing director of ASA Holidays, also attributed the drop in enquiries to the typically low demand in January and February, and customers waiting for the National Association of Travel Agents Singapore (Natas) fair 2020 in mid-Feb, which offers tours with lower prices.

Farmosa Holiday told BT that Singaporeans typically prefer shorter, cheaper tours during the first two months of the year. This was concurred by other travel operators as well.

A Chinatown-based travel agency, which does not want to be named, is not operating any tours to Australia during Chinese New Year, though the decision was made way before the fires worsened in December.

Meanwhile, CTC Travel is operating one to two group travels to Sydney during Chinese New Year "as per normal", as it's the off-peak season for travelling.

Dynasty Travel and Hong Thai Travel appear to be the outliers.

Dynasty Travel has seen a 15 per cent year-on-year decrease in January and February bookings to Australia, and it expects the drop to grow somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent.

Hong Thai Travel reported a roughly 15 per cent drop in new enquiries and bookings since the fires worsened in mid-December.

Stella Chow, senior advertising and marketing manager at Hong Thai Travel, said: "Most of the tourist destinations are not affected by the fires, but Singaporeans are concerned about the hot weather and worried the situation may get worse."

Potential travellers are adopting a 'wait-and-see attitude", though Dynasty Travel has "not yet" cut tours or prices, said Alicia Seah, public relations and communications director at Dynasty Travel. Further, some of its customers are considering changing their destinations from Sydney to western Australia and Tasmania, which are less affected by the bushfires.

Dynasty Travel is prepared to cater accordingly. That said, Ms Seah told BT: "We feel that the current situation has a temporary impact, as weather conditions will improve when the climate changes to (the) cooler autumn season in March, which will be the beginning of the (travel) peak season in Australia." This is agreed by Ms Chow.

The Straits Times reported on Monday that last Sunday's cooler weather has brought some relief to New South Wales and Victoria, though the heat will return again later this week.

Once the bushfires have been contained, sometime in February, Dynasty Travel will launch "an aggressive campaign" to promote Australia as a travel destination, in collaboration with Australian state tourism boards.

In the meantime, travel operators have tweaked their programmes in view of the escalating bushfires Down Under. Dynasty Travel has set up a contingency plan of indoor programmes, such as visits to museums and shopping malls, as the Blue Mountain National Park is closed on certain days due to bushfires.

On the other hand, Chan Brothers did once switch a programme at the Hunter Valley to a Sydney city tour for a group of customers "as a precautionary measure due to the then status of the bushfires".

According to the travel agencies, hotel prices and airfares have not shown signs of decline so far, as students going back to Australia in January and February help prop up the demand.

Major airlines plying the Singapore-eastern-Australia route also told BT that they have not seen a significant change in demand for travel to Australia. These include Singapore Airlines, Scoot, Emirates, and British Airways. A British Airways spokesman added: "We're monitoring the situation closely."

Wong Liyan, branding and communications manager at Frasers Hospitality, told BT there has been "no impact" on its hospitality portfolio in Australia.

A spokesman from travel price comparison site Kayak said: "We believe what Australia can offer will keep the travellers coming back for more, as we have seen good forward bookings to Australian destinations."

While Kayak is unable to share bookings data due to commercial sensitivity, Kayak has so far seen a 1 per cent year-on-year increase in clicks to Sydney in January and February.

A Tourism Australia spokesman also told BT that feedback from its trade and commercial partners in the Singapore market showed "no noticeable impact on bookings or of changes to travel plans".

"We will continue to monitor the situation closely, but at this stage we aren't seeing any signs of demand for travel to Australia slowing."