A new coronavirus strain known as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was first identified in Saudi Arabia during 2012. As of June 3, 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been notified of 1,179 laboratory-confirmed cases of such infection and 442 related deaths (excluding data reported by South Korea). So far, confirmed cases have been reported in 25 countries, with the most notable outbreak in South Korea right now. News reports say that it has the highest number of cases outside the Middle East, renewing fears in many East Asian countries, including Thailand that have tightened controls to prevent this deadly virus and avoid far-reaching impacts on their people's lives and economies as experienced during the 2003 SARS outbreak.
Inevitably, one business sector that will be affected quite badly will be tourism. However, the impact of this outbreak in South Korea towards Thai tourism should largely be limited to our outbound tours to that country. Given this, we at KResearch expect that the number of Thai tourist arrivals to South Korea may reach only 437,500 during 2015, declining 8.9 percent from our pre-MERS-CoV outbreak forecast of about 480,000. South Korean inbound tourism to Thailand should not be affected much; hence we, preliminarily, maintain our current forecast that there will be about 1.31 million South Korean holidaymakers visiting Thailand during 2015, rising 17.2 percent YoY, versus the contraction of 13.7 percent reported for 2014.
KReseach is of the view that although there has been no report of any MERS-CoV infection yet in Thailand, to protect our tourism – an important economic engine this year – from being hurt as during the 2003 SARS outbreak, the government should exercise stringent controls to ensure that tourists planning to visit Thailand can be confident towards their safety and well-being while being here. In addition, local travel-related businesses are advised to monitor the situation very closely so that they can adjust to threats in a timely manner.
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