COVID-19: China Travel Update

Guido, can you share some information about the situation, post-Covid, today in Shanghai?

The lockdown of Wuhan was lifted on 8th April, which was a milestone. Whereas Shanghai was, more or less, starting to go back to normal from 24th March, onwards. Not all the hotels have reopened, but those that have are seeing quite a good turnout for domestic demand, although it’s a L-shaped rebound, rather than a V-shaped rebound, as SARS was. SARS was really a V-shaped. Within two months, all the hotels were back to high occupancies, without losing ADR. Whereas now, the growth is much slower. Traffic is, pretty much, back to what it was previously, before Covid. Maybe there are, actually, more people taking taxis, rather than subways, because of the social distancing. But the alert level is still high, because the Chinese government has been implementing very strict quarantine measures, which have been stepped up over the past month, due to the imported cases, from flights, which triggered the closing of all international flights, on 20th March. We still receive daily communications on how many imported cases are arriving, from the few flights that are still taking place.

They have also, significantly, increased the harshness of the confinement. That means, for a certain period, you could confine either at home or in hotels or in government structures. From one month ago, you are not able to confine anymore in your home or at hotels. You have to be confined in government structures, which are hotels as well, but they are hotels dedicated for that.

Most recently, they have added an extra week of confinement, so you are confined for two weeks in a government structure and then you can go home, where you are confined for an additional week. So it’s for three weeks now.

So no one is going to be travelling to China or move internationally?

Absolutely. They have reduced flights from 1,500 per day, to just 150, during the month of April. In May, they are negotiating, country by country, to restore some of the flights. However, particularly for foreigners, you can catch a flight to get out, but you’re not sure if you can come back in. In terms of morale, for the foreigners especially, it’s still a pretty tough situation. You’re not necessarily able to enter all the premises that you want, as a foreigner, because there is still some stigmatism. Other than that, the economy is back to 80% or 90% of what it was before, domestically, at least, and China has a huge domestic demand, so it’s enough for the international hotels, to be able to see revenues going up.