Statistics collected by travel analytics company ForwardKeys indicates outbound bookings for March and April to countries in the wider Asia Pacific region, excluding China and Hong Kong, have decreased by 10.5% year on year.

This comes as coronavirus has killed more than 1,300 people in China and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is currently advising against all but essential travel to the country.

North-east Asia seems to be most impacted, with outbound bookings for March and April behind 17.1% on this time last year. 

Additionally, the Chinese outbound market has also decreased for March and April compared to this point in 2019 – 36.7% behind in Europe, 56.1% less in Africa and the Middle East, and 63.2% behind in the Americas.

“The world’s largest and highest spending outbound travel market, China, is in severe difficulty; cancellations are growing by the day and the trend is now spreading to surrounding countries,” said Olivier Ponti, vice-president of Insights at ForwardKeys.

“On the brighter side, however, we are not seeing a slowdown in travel outside the Asia Pacific region; so, this is a moment to fill the void by studying alternative origin markets and focussing promotional efforts on them.”