SARS-like virus hits travel to South Korea
A fresh outbreak of a SARS-like illness in South Korea has caused flight bookings to the country to plummet.
Travel from other parts of Asia has been worst affected, with net bookings from the northeast of the continent down by 188% last week. Bookings from Hong Kong alone were down by 329%.
From other continents, bookings are down by 60%, according to ForwardKeys, which monitors future travel plans by analysing 14 million reservation transactions each day.
MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has claimed 20 lives, including three yesterday, and, so far, more than 150 people in South Korea are believed to have been infected.
Yesterday, Germany reported its first death from the disease while at the same time four new cases were reported in South Korea.
There is no cure or vaccine for MERS, which is caused by a deadly virus from the same family as the one that triggered the SARS epidemic in China in 2003.
ForwardKeys said bookings in July are also being hit as, so far, bookings for the first week of the month are down 3% year on year.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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