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German Tour Operators Plan Resumption of Holidays in Tsunami Effected Zones
German tour operators are planning to resume normal package holidays in the flood-hit areas of southern and south-east Asia over the next few weeks to support the destinations and their economies.
After cancelling holidays in the worst-affected areas of Thailand (Phuket), Sri Lanka and the Maldives during most of January, charter flights will be gradually re-started in the near future.
TUI announced it would probably resume flights to Phuket and Sri Lanka from February after restarting its Maldives programme on January 1. TUI Germany chief Volker Böttcher said the German market leader aimed to return to normality as quickly as possible, and did not want to further damage the destinations by cutting off their tourism revenues. About half of Phuket`s hotel capacity had been damaged, about 60% of the hotels south of Colombo but only about 15% of resorts on the Maldives, TUI said.
Leisure carrier LTU said it hoped to resume non-stop flights to Phuket in February while it is operating two instead of three weekly flights to Colombo and its flights to Male (Maldives) are operating normally. On a tour of Sri Lanka and the Maldives last week, managing director Jürgen Marbach promised local tourism officials and managers that LTU would continue to serve southern Asia. Condor plans to resume one of three weekly Frankfurt-Colombo flights in February but is not expected to restart flights to Phuket until winter 2005/06.
* The World Tourism Organization (WTO) will hold an emergency meeting of its executive council on Phuket on January 31-February 1 to show its solidarity with the region which was returning to normal "at an unbelievable speedâ€. The Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) will hold its tourism forum on Langkawi, Malaysia, as planned from January 21-29.
Germany 10/1/2005
