Headlines in this issue
- NI hotel rooms and tours cancelled
- Direct Dublin-China flight deferred
- Car sales plummet in China. But also bad news for car makers worldwide
- Waiting on Chinese supplies? 300,000 fewer containers leaving weekly
NI: 3,000 hotel rooms and tours cancelled by Chinese tourists
It has been reported that as many as 3,000 hotel rooms have been cancelled by Chinese tourists between January and March.
According to the BBC, coach companies have also had tours cancelled as far away as the summer.
Tourism Ireland estimates 100,000 Chinese tourists visited the island of Ireland in 2018.
It has cancelled a planned sales mission to the country at the end of the month and has suspended social media advertising with industry partners.
The cancellation of trips has had an effect on coach companies in particular, with one now looking to other markets for business.
Caroline McComb, of McComb’s Coaches, told BBC News NI she depends heavily on the Asian market. – News Letter 19 Feb
New direct Dublin to China flight deferred over coronavirus concerns
A new direct Dublin to China air service due to start in March has been deferred as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, and there is concern for seasonal flights due to resume in April.
This decision as well as the cancellation of a sales mission to China by Tourism Ireland comes as the Department of Foreign Affairs advises against travel to mainland China, excluding Hong Kong and Macau.
The Irish Association of Travel agents said growing corporate travel between Ireland and China has been badly hit by the outbreak. – Irish Times 20 Feb
Coronavirus sends car sales skidding in China
The panic over coronavirus has triggered a near-total collapse of car sales in China, piling further pressure on the already struggling global auto industry.
Sales of new cars fell 96pc year-on-year in the first week of February, with an average of just 811 vehicles sold each day in a country of 1.4 billion people.
The sales collapse will hit car companies across the planet, including the likes of Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in Britain. Demand in China is critical for car companies around the world.
Capital Economics expects an unprecedented Chinese economic contraction of 10pc in the first quarter of 2020 – a slump which could have disastrous consequences worldwide.
Car companies around the world are feeling the impact from coronavirus as supplies of critical parts produced in China are disrupted. – Daily Telegraph 21 Feb.
‘Dominoes falling’ in global shipping
Container shipping from Chinese ports has collapsed since the outbreak of coronavirus and has yet to show any sign of recovery, threatening weeks of chaos for manufacturing supply lines and the broader structure of global trade.
Almost half of the planned sailings on the route from Asia to North Europe have been cancelled over the last four weeks. A parallel drama is unfolding on routes from the Pacific Rim to the US and Latin America.
Lars Jensen from SeaIntelligence in Copenhagen said the loss of traffic is running at 300,000 containers a week. This will cause a logistical crunch in Europe in early March even if the epidemic is brought under control quickly.
“The dominoes are toppling through the whole chain. When ships don’t leave port in China, they don’t stop to pick up cargo in Hong Kong, Saigon, or Singapore either. Freight rates are in free fall,” he said.
Refrigerated ships full of frozen food – known as ‘reefers’ – are unable to enter Chinese ports because berths are full and therefore cannot tap into electricity chargers. There is a logjam caused by the critical shortage of dockers and drivers. Meat supplies are spoiling at sea.
The US Agriculture Transportation Commission said the Pacific supply chain has been badly “compromised” and logistical headaches are building up as US ports as well. There will soon be an acute lack of containers in both American and European ports as the finely-tuned regime of world maritime transport goes haywire.
Mr Jensen said European factories are already feeling the shock. “The first to be hit is the auto-industry because it has a very tight supply-chain. Companies are having to airlift in supplies from Asia, which is extraordinarily expensive,” he said. – Daily Telegraph 20 Feb
