Apart from the human tragedy of the spreading coronavirus epidemic there are also serious effects rippling out through the travel industry.
While the most attention has been focused on cruise ships that have been quarantined in several places with thousands of passengers on board, there has also been a sharp effect on airlines, with nearly all international flights to China suspended.
Aside from the quarantines, a number of cruise lines are barring passengers who have recently been in China or other outbreak areas. But cruise lines have also been faced with passengers who want to cancel or postpone trips until the outbreak is over; some, like Royal Caribbean, have said they will not offer refunds to customers who pass up sailings for this reason.
Even major business events far from China have been impacted; the Mobile World Congress, the major annual trade conference of the mobile phone industry has seen two of its largest exhibitors, LG and Ericsson, pull out of this month’s event because they do not want hundreds of employees traveling, and other companies may follow.
As for the airlines, they now suddenly have a surplus of long-haul planes sitting on the ground, with no idea how long the crisis may last or how many people will want to visit China afterwards, although certainly far fewer than projected. This leads to some reconsideration of routes and assigning those planes to more promising flights, especially for flights that were already not filling up. American, for instance, has been considering serving China only from Dallas/Fort Worth, and dropping its West Coast flights.
