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After Collapse of Tourism, ASEAN Eyes Domestic Travel, Weighs 'Travel Bubble'

VOA News

   On a recent afternoon in Ho Chi Minh City, the airport was teeming with
   strangers who crowded one another in line, filed health forms, and got
   on planes, three to a row. Almost all were Vietnamese citizens, and if
   judging by the paucity of empty seats on the planes, the nation seems
   to be succeeding in its campaign to promote domestic tourists in place
   of the foreign ones unable to come because of COVID-19.

   All over Southeast Asia, governments and companies are focusing on
   domestic tourism in the wake of the collapse in international travel.
   Hotels in Vietnam offer rooms at half price. In Thailand citizens head
   on road trips, with so many hitting the beaches that some had to be
   closed again to enforce social distancing. In Malaysia there is a
   contest to make a video to promote domestic travel.

   Next on the horizon could be a "travel bubble" to allow people to move
   across Southeast Asian borders in places that have sufficiently
   contained the coronavirus. While travel has plummeted all over the
   world, tourism in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
   was hit early because of its proximity to China, where the virus broke
   out, and its reliance on Chinese tourists for revenue.

   "Travel bubble' is now the new buzzword in Asia, as most countries
   appear to have COVID-19 under control," said HSBC, a retail and
   investment bank, in a report on Friday.

   It said the nations likely to use the bubble are those that flattened
   the curve of virus infections while starting to reopen their economies.

   "Although the implementation of these 'travel bubbles' remains in the
   early stages, four countries in ASEAN are potential candidates, namely
   Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia," the bank said.

   While Vietnamese wait for the ability to go overseas, they are seeing
   ads in a national campaign dubbed "Vietnamese People Travel in
   Vietnam." Commercials range from TV hosts welcoming viewers on board a
   cable car in central Da Nang city, to drone footage sweeping over
   northwestern mountains shaded in wispy clouds.

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