Fear of Mysterious Bird Flu Cuts Tourism in Hong Kong
By PETER STEIN and DIANE BRADY
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 12/23/97
HONG KONG -- The bird flu's human casualties may be few, but the disease is rapidly infecting the Hong Kong economy as would-be tourists cancel vacation plans and chicken sales plummet.
On Monday, a six-year-old boy became the eleventh suspected case of Influenza A H5N1, which took the life of a 13-year-old girl Sunday. That marks the third human fatality attributed to the virus, known as bird flu because until recently, birds were its only known victims.
Although health officials say the risk of infection is slight, many tourists aren't taking any chances. That's bad news for airlines already suffering sagging air traffic to Hong Kong from big markets like Taiwan and Japan.
"We're getting a lot of calls from concerned passengers who are worried about going to Hong Kong," says Nieh Kuo-wei, a senior spokesman for EVA Air of Taiwan. EVA Air, fellow Taiwan carrier China Airlines and Cathay Pacific Airways of Hong Kong all have trumpeted cheap travel packages to Hong Kong recently to drum up business.
Refunded Fares
Now, all three airlines are offering refunds to panicked customers, even though the cut-rate fares weren't supposed to be refundable. "On something like this," says Cathay spokeswoman Tanya Scott, withholding refunds "isn't worth the upset or aggravation." So far, she says, "we're getting a lot of calls but not so many cancellations."
Japanese, too, are skittish about the Hong Kong bird flu. "Health is a very crucial issue for Japanese travelers," says Yoshio Koteda, a spokesman for Japan Travel Bureau in Tokyo, one of the country's largest travel agencies. "If individual travelers want to go, they'll still go, but some large tour groups and incentive groups will probably go somewhere else," such as Korea, where the falling won makes vacationing a bargain, says Mr. Koteda.
For Hong Kong's already anemic tourism industry, the news couldn't be worse. In November, arrivals to Hong Kong dropped 22% from a year earlier, pinched in part by the city's high prices relative to the rest of Asia. Arrivals from Japan, which normally supplies one out of every four visitors to this Chinese territory, plunged 59%.
Hong Kong's tourism industry is trying to minimize the damage. "This is not a public health issue, but just a few isolated cases," says Peter Randall, spokesman for the Hong Kong Tourism Association. To promote awareness, the association now issues a bird flu fact sheet to arriving tourists, which emphasizes that "the risk of catching bird flu is very small indeed."
Chicken Feed
Tell that to the 20 Americans arriving in Beijing Monday whose tickets were booked by Patrick Cheung, director of Hong Kong's Blue Sea Travel Service. "Their agent thought the flu was happening in Beijing and insisted that we cancel their Peking Duck dinner," says Mr. Cheung. He told them Beijing wasn't even remotely at risk, but they held firm. All poultry has been struck from the menu for the rest of their tour.
Birds are disappearing from Hong Kong dinner plates, too. On Monday, the traditional Chinese winter solstice holiday, the aroma of cooked chicken should have wafted from kitchens across the territory. Instead, many dinners this year smelled more like the seafood feast eaten by Cheung Kwok Hung and his family on Sunday. "This illness is so hard to cure, we felt it was better to be careful," says Mr. Cheung, a retired hospital worker. At Shamrock Sandwich Co., which delivers sandwiches to offices around Hong Kong island, "we're putting less chicken on the menu," says Andrew Monks, a Shamrock sales manager.
Health officials in Hong Kong say people can't contract bird flu by eating cooked chicken, but that is little comfort to Guangnan (Holdings) Ltd. Each day, the Hong Kong-listed foodstuffs company normally imports about 100,000 chickens to Hong Kong for sale to local wholesalers. That business, which accounts for about 10% of Guangnan's revenue, has dropped by 30% to 40% in the last few weeks, says a company spokeswoman. Over the weekend, Hong Kong farmers warned that they may have to slaughter their unsold chickens to avoid the high cost of feeding them.
Even if the virus is contained, its fallout will likely linger. Originally, Mr. Koteda of Japan Travel Bureau says he had hoped travel to Hong Kong would recover fairly quickly. Now, he says, "it's difficult to predict when tourism will pick up. Maybe in six months, if we're lucky."
--Kristi Heim contributed to this article.
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Another form of Asian contagion!
CT |
