By 2024, the new CEO of online travel agency Agoda predicted on Monday that Asian visitors will only gradually begin travelling abroad at pre-pandemic levels.
According to Omri Morgenshtern, who took over as CEO of Agoda in July, the Asia-focused company anticipates it will take around six months for travellers from Asian nations, excluding China, to travel with confidence after the corresponding COVID-19 limitations are repealed.
“Korea opened up two months ago … but numbers are 40 per cent of what it was before, so it’s not jumping,” he said.
In contrast to the greater and speedier tourism recovery in the US and Europe, Agoda’s booking volumes across its Asian regions have returned to 2019 levels, although more so in domestic travel, Morgenshtern told Reuters in an interview.
In the US or Europe, it seemed as though everyone had already determined that COVID was gone, according to Morgenshtern, who noted that travel rapidly resumed and many people stopped wearing masks there.
But even after the regulations were lifted, most individuals in numerous Asian nations, including Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, and Indonesia, continued to wear masks.
According to Morgenshtern, Agoda is introducing more goods that will enable users to book their entire trip through the website and take advantage of further savings.
A division of Booking Holdings Inc., the business lost 1,500 employees in 2020 to reduce spending in the face of the epidemic. He said that headcount had now reached pre-Covid levels.
(with inputs from agencies)
