Covid-19 tips

The New Zealand government said on Wednesday it would not require travelers from China to produce a negative Covid-19 test, bucking a trend that has seen a number of nations implement such measures as cases surge in China.

Travel has always offered an escape from the ordinary. But it has classically offered escapism by creating what you might call “sensory deprivation bubbles.” It conjured the fantasy that troubles didn’t exist within the space of their resorts, cruise ships, theme parks, and first-class cabins. 

Authorities around the world are imposing or considering curbs on travellers from China as COVID-19 cases in the country surge following its relaxation of “zero-COVID” rules.

Beijing Capital International Airport will no longer require proof of a negative Covid result for entry into its terminals, Reuters has reported, quoting Beijing News, a newspaper owned by the Chinese Communist Party.

There’s still something vital missing from the global tourism economy, and that’s the presence of Chinese tourists.

The Justice Department on Tuesday asked an appeals court panel to reverse an April 2021 ruling that declared unlawful a government order requiring masks on airplanes, buses, trains, ridesharing services and at airports and other transportation hubs.

This has been a year of growing optimism around the travel industry’s recovery, as well as growing pessimism about rising inflation, sky high rates, and a possible recession. Here are some of the highs and lows of the past year, in the form of 11 charts produced by the Skift Research team. 

More than half of Chinese say they will put off travel abroad, for periods from several months to more than a year, even if borders reopened tomorrow, a study showed on Tuesday, a sign that consumer recovery from Covid-19 measures will take time.

China will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine starting from Jan. 8, the National Health Commission said on Monday in a major step towards easing curbs on its borders, which have been largely shut since 2020.

Johannesburg-based Club Travel Corporate is entering a critical next phase after securing the backing of a unique investment fund that will put new emphasis on working with female-owned businesses on the continent.

Skift Megatrends is arguably our largest companywide exercise every year, and we’ve been making our research-driven and editorially informed prognostications for a decade now.

Rocked by a Covid relief financial scandal that led to the jailing and resignations of now-former CEO Fabio Cannavale and chief operating officer Andrea Bertoli, Amsterdam-based Lastminute.com’s shareholders elected Luca Concone as an executive director, and he’ll serve as CEO.

Chinese people, cut off from the rest of the world for three years by stringent COVID-19 curbs, flocked to travel sites on Tuesday ahead of borders reopening next month, even as rising infections strained the health system and roiled the economy.

Whether it is out of ego or for personal financial incentives, companies sometimes do mergers and acquisitions for the wrong reasons, and many academic studies show that takeover deals generally turn out to be “losers.”

Travel’s performance dropped in November from 84 to 81 points, according to Skift Research’s latest analysis in the Skift Travel Health Index: November 2022 Highlights report.

Peru’s post-pandemic recovery will take longer than expected because of the violent political protests that started in December. As the protests continue, the country’s competitiveness as a tourist destination is at risk if the political situation isn’t resolved and images of unrest and chaos stay in the international spotlight.

It was the news everyone was waiting for. Finally the U.S. government set a date, Nov 8. 2021, to reopen its borders.

Travel is picking up in the U.S. In December, 55 percent of Americans traveled, 10 percentage points higher than the same time last year. However, the number of respondents who travelled decreased by 2 percentage points in December compared to September indicative of typical seasonality in travel with the winter season commencing.

The absence of Chinese tourists as countries around the world opened their borders again remains the most impactful development this year. China’s commitment to zero Covid cases dashed the normalcy return hopes of the global tourism industry.

The recent relaxation of zero-Covid policies in China offered great hope to a corporate travel industry stymied by those rules and one waiting to bring China back into the fold to speed up its recovery. But the ensuing testing requirements being put in place now by countries will be a major setback and dent much-needed confidence, industry associations warn.

Three years of COVID-19 forced Becky Zhang’s specialty food business in Macau to near collapse. Founded by her grandmother more than fifty years ago, her store selling pastries and dried beef only survived thanks to residents who bought small quantities to help keep them afloat.