It’s not only Chinese tourists, business travelers, and property buyers who’re not showing up, but also travelers from all over the world who’ve gotten second thoughts about sitting on a plane.
By Wolf Richter. This is the transcript from my podcast last Sunday, THE WOLF STREET REPORT:
Starting Saturday, February 15th, there won’t be any flights between San Francisco and mainland China, until at least through the end of March, down from 90 roundtrip flights a week. In 2019, over half a million Chinese tourists, business travelers, and people coming to buy houses and condos as investment properties visited San Francisco.
There have been local reports that foot traffic at San Francisco Airport eateries has dropped by 50%. Due to the cancelled flights, the airport itself is missing out on landing fees.
And air fares have plunged. Which is good for people who still fly. But not for the airlines. My wife had made reservations in mid-January to fly from San Francisco to Japan in March. At the time, ticket prices were on up there, and there had been no good deals available. A few days ago, she checked again, and flights that had had little availability suddenly had lots of availability.
These are flights from San Francisco SFO to Tokyo Narita or Tokyo Haneda. They have nothing to do with China. They don’t go anywhere near China. But apparently, there had been cancellations, and not enough new tickets had been sold. And for the flight she has booked, current ticket prices have plunged by half. So she did some checking and found out what people who still want to travel to Japan are doing: they’re cancelling their old ticket and pay the cancellation fee, and then they’re booking a new flight, perhaps at a more convenient time and with better connections, now that prices have come down hard.
Think about this scenario for a moment: Airlines face a shutdown of travel to and from China. And on their non-China routes to Asia, they’re facing cancellations of tickets they already sold, as tourists and business travelers are choosing to stay home. And they’re facing a plunge in new ticket sales. To fill those seats, they do what airlines do: they cut fares. And then those fare cuts trigger a new wave of cancellations of the high-fare tickets they’d sold earlier, and these people are rebooking at the current low fares. This is called revenue evaporation.
Last year, visitors from China spent $1.3 billion in the three Bay Area counties of San Francisco County, San Mateo County, which is the northern part of Silicon Valley, and Marin County, which is just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
In the fall semester of 2019, there were over 4,000 foreign students from China at four local universities, UC Berkeley, University of San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and Santa Clara University.
All this is getting shut down or has already been shut down. San Francisco isn’t the only place. The same is happening in other major travel destinations in the US, and outside the US, such as Paris, Barcelona, and even Tokyo and Kyoto, which Chinese tourists suddenly discovered in very large numbers a few years ago.
And it’s not only mainland-Chinese tourists, business travelers, and people coming to buy houses and condos as investment properties. It’s people from all over the world who’ve gotten second thoughts about getting on a plane and sitting next to a person who has been infected with the coronavirus.
So let me tell you what this actually looks like. We live in the touristy part of San Francisco, between the section of Lombard Street that is called the “crookedest street in the world,” and Fisherman’s Wharf. Even on the beautiful warm sunny afternoons we’ve been having recently, which would normally bring huge crowds to Fisherman’s Wharf and masses balling up at the top and at the bottom of Crooked Street, well, there were some people, but the masses are gone.
The mainland Chinese are gone. But also, some other international tourists are gone as apparently many have chosen to wait it out at home, rather than get on a plane.
San Francisco is also a big destination and departure point for cruise ships. So who wants to be on a cruise after several cruise ships in Asia turned into pariah-ships that weren’t allowed to dock, or whose passengers weren’t allowed to disembark due to a coronavirus outbreak on board, which turns a cruise vacation into a total nightmare.
Royal Caribbean Cruises said on Thursday that it had canceled 18 cruises in Southeast Asia. Carnival Cruise Line said earlier that it already canceled some cruises in Asia and might cancel all remaining cruises in Asia through the end of April.
And who is going to buy the houses and condos that the investors in China had planned on buying, but who now cannot even come and look at?
In 2018, 163 million people from mainland China made international trips. That would be about half the US population! They spent $130 billion overseas, according to the China Tourism Academy. And this has suddenly stopped.
At least 14 countries, including the US, have limited or banned flights from mainland China. Other countries have imposed quarantine requirements on travelers from China. China itself has banned all outbound group tourism.
The number of trips Chinese tourists have taken over the Chinese New Year holidays has collapsed by 73% this year, from last year, according to the Ministry of Transport in China.
An industry group for south-east Asian tourism said that 90-100% of trips by mainland Chinese to Thailand have been cancelled. Hong Kong has essentially shut down tourism from China, imposing a 14-day quarantine on anyone from mainland China.
Macau, the gambling mecca for mainland Chinese, experienced a near-80% year-over-year plunge in total visits over the Chinese New Year holidays, according to government data. Casinos were shut down for two weeks, and gambling revenues for the rest of the month of February are expected to collapse to near-nothing.
Airbnb has experienced an 80% plunge in business in China, a person close to the company told the Wall Street Journal. China is an important factor in the growth story that Airbnb is trying to weave for its IPO this year. And the coronavirus might derail that IPO this year, the person said. But it’s not just bookings in China: it’s also bookings by Chinese travelers in other countries. Those Airbnb hosts in those countries are now confronted with cancellations.
In Singapore, Chinese tourists account for about 20% of all tourists, and they’re not showing up. But as in many places, it’s not just Chinese tourists that are not showing up, it’s frazzled tourists from other countries too, and Singapore is seeing a decline of about 30% of tourist arrivals from all countries, the CEO of the Singapore Tourism Board told Bloomberg TV. And those arrivals could plunge further if the situation persists.
Numerous global conferences have been cancelled around the world for fear of spreading the virus at the conference, including the world’s biggest mobile trade fair, the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which had been scheduled to take place later this month, after dozens of global tech giants, telecom equipment makers, and telecom carriers pulled out due to contagion fears.
Last year, the Mobile World Congress had attracted 110,000 people from nearly 200 countries, including many from China. They’re now busy cancelling their flight reservations and lodgings, including on Airbnb. These business travelers were expected to spend money liberally on their expense accounts, including in fancy eating and drinking establishments. But now they’re not coming.
And this is what I’m seeing in San Francisco too: It’s not only the tourist and business travelers and property buyers from China that have suddenly evaporated; it’s that many tourists and business travelers from other countries have also cancelled, in fear of sitting next to an infected person on the plane or whatever.
When you drive around San Francisco or the Bay Area in general, the commuter arteries where tourists rarely travel are as horribly congested as ever, and the local weekend traffic is as bad as ever. But in the tourist areas, there is now a sort of a relaxed calm, with people leisurely circulating, enjoying the nice weather and the absence of massive crowds.
And where we live, it has gotten a little more laid-back for locals. If you’re not in the tourist trade, this is a welcome thing.
I heard the same thing about Kyoto, Japan, which in recent years had become overrun with Chinese mass-tourism, on top of having already been overrun with tourism from around the world. Kyoto is a spiritual place in the soul of the Japanese. But it had been impossible to get the spiritual side in recent years. All they got were huge, huge crowds. Now the people that are not making their living off those crowds, they’re reflecting on this sense of having returned to something like semi-serenity where there are still crowds, but not as relentlessly huge.
But for everyone in the travel and tourist industry, from airlines and airports, to restaurants, hotels, Airbnb hosts, event organizers, and to the cities’ revenue departments, which extract money from travelers at every twist and turn, this sudden disappearance of tourists and business travelers and potential property buyers already has major consequences.
If it persists for more than just a few weeks, if it drags out, as is likely, for months and perhaps for much of the year, for many enterprises in the travel and tourist industry – and we’re talking travel and tourist industry outside China – this kind of revenue evaporation will have catastrophic consequences.
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People are stressed out,
wondering about their kids’ futures;
it’s weakening their immune systems.
True that,,, and i will add, totally anecdotally to be sure, that road and tourist traffic in Tampa Bay area appears to be somewhat afflicted,,, though not to the same level as SF Bay area, yet.
Nobody at local local FCA dealer yesterday except a few at the service section,, Lowes mostly empty,, almost all the places that are usually way too crowded at this time of year, top of the ”season” here, way down…
Not sure what part of Tampa you’re referring to but I’m in Sarasota and everything is a packed down here. Much busier than today than in previous years
If all you have is an insult for me,
you’re not furthering the conversation.
What do you have that’s “less of a stretch”,
less random ?
Red swan event?
KL,
Clever.
2-21-20 (Friday) market close:
Gold up $25+
Hopefully The corrupted Olympic Games Will be cancelled. Only money and doping nowdays in The games.
I found this on zerohedge.com today:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/coronavirus-panic-goes-global-skorea-warns-watershed-moment-italy-quarantines-12-towns
“Emperor Naruhito cancelled a public event on Sunday, and also reportedly expressed some alarm about the virus and the Tokyo Olympics. Naruhito, who turned 60 on Sunday, ascended to the throne last spring after his father became the first Japanese emperor in 2 centuries to abdicate.
He said he was looking forward to this summer’s games, adding that the ’64 Tokyo games were a special memory in his childhood, Reuters reports.
“This new coronavirus is a concern. I would like to send my sympathies to those who are infected and their families,” he said.
“At the same time, my thoughts are with the efforts of those who are treating them and working hard to prevent the spread of the infection. I hope their efforts will bear fruit soon.”
Tokyo will host the Summer Olympics from July 24 for the second time, and Naruhito said the first Tokyo games, held in October 1964 when he was four years old, were one of the highlights of his childhood.
The Tokyo Olympics are the major barometer right now. If they get cancelled, then the world will know: This outbreak is out of control.”
I would imagine that the airlines that fly pacific routes will be looking at the 737 max planes that they have on order with Boeing and the ticket sales evaporation and thinking that the Max problems are a perfect excuse to back out of their Boeing orders without the usual financial penalties.
if I may, a bit off topic (ok a bunch) but woke to an article in the la crimes this am, beginning 20/21 free tuition for undergrads at usc w/ family income under 80k, this after announcing increases just last month. maybe after some debate.. they see the real possibility of the end of tax payers financing their fuckery. perhaps baby gets some new shoes after all wolf?
According to the article, the ownership of a home is excluded in calculating this “benefit.” If you’re a millionaire quit your job and buy a multi million dollar home, have your child go to college for free, sell home, then retire and brag about how smart you are on Wolfstreet.
Weren’t California colleges tuition free back when the Boomers were in school?
Harrold:
Not sure what category I fit in (refer: “Boomers”) but when I was college age (1948)”state” colleges for residents (CA) was almost “free”; paid for books which was small investment. Major CA colleges UC, etc….were “pretty affordable” for the common people. Others cost more but the best education could be gotten for comparatively speaking a fraction of what is required today.
I follow what my grandchildren (and parents) are paying and it just blows my mind. Most live in the “greater” SF peninsula area.
Our “system” must be just blind to the fact that if you load these kids (and their parents) up with enormous debt right out the gate that they can’t possibly support a “consumer” economy in the long run.
A family that earned $10,000 year was pretty much considered part of the “middle” class back then.
Today is just out of control; insane! It can’t last.
The California UC System in the 50s/60s was a wonder of the world with brilliant professors in all fields.
Even into the late 60s, you paid high prices for your books, but tuition was minimal.
Now, that same system has grown thoroughly corrupt with part-time teachers, or student teachers instructing the class.
Monstrous tuitions, with part-time pay for many of the professors. It’s a reflection of how $$$ has corrupted ALL of America.
A less crowded SFO and faster drive up the 101, short sellers finally getting a break, why did we not think of this virus thing a long time ago? Black swan meet Everything bubble.
Ummmm…. with ~800 confirmed cases, China shut everything down at the beginning of Lunar New Year.
Now that there are ~75,000 confirmed cases, the factories, are, of course, logically, re-opening.
I’m short several stocks (GE, BA and a Bakken fracker) so I desperately wanted this to be the black swan that pops the everything bubble.
It is now obvious the whole Coronavirus thing was fake. Scripted in 1981, a novel by Dean Koontz, “The Eyes of Darkness”,” the Wuhan-400 virus would escape a Wuhan bio-weapons lab in 2020 and cause a worldwide pandemic with pneumonia like symptoms. And just to be certain, they named the virus the NOVEL Coronavirus. For those who don’t have eyes that see, it’s just a coincidence, and corona-virus just has to be real. Well, answer this: why are the factories in China going back to work now that there are ~75,000 confirmed cases?!?!??
Still hoping the everything bubble pops soon.
Wolf, let’s meet up in Kyoto. I’ll be there in March too. We can have a beer and bask in the tourist free serenity…and possible Coronavirus.
My wife’s going solo. I gotta work. I don’t get vacations :-]
Funny, last time my wife went without me for the same reason. Honestly, I’m on the fence about the whole trip at the moment, but we’ll see what transpires in Japan in the next couple of weeks.
GO!!! This might be the best opportunity to see Kyoto without getting run over by crowds.
Just make sure your trip doesn’t coincide with Golden Week (end of April and early May). This is when everyone in Japan goes to Kyoto :-]
We’re good on timing, but I’m actually more worried about things being shut down while we’re there if things get worse. Otherwise, the selfish (possibly evil?) part of me is hoping it will reduce the number of other tourists while we’re there. I actually looked into re-booking some of our reservations this week, but prices seem to be about the same so far.
Wolf, take it from an older curmudgeon, take vacations for yourself, they’re good for your head and blood pressure. I didn’t and I’m sorry I didn’t. Two years from now your business won’t show the difference. And you’ll have memories forever. Just don’t overdo it as we would all miss you.
Yes, I know. I do take two long weekends per year, usually, one to go skiing, and the other to go hiking. And once every few years, I go to Japan (while working there, most recently in Nov 2018) and once every 10 years, I go to Europe. I did all my traveling earlier in life. After I turned 40, I quit everything and traveled around the world for over three years straight, from country to country, over 100 countries, and it was wonderful. And after that, I traveled for work quite a bit internationally — Middle East, Asia, and Europe. But all this took the travel bug out of me.
Stressed out? More like freaked out!
I had the pleasure of sharing a table every night with a retired Dentist from Kyoto on board the Diamond Princess that was in quarantine in Yokohama from 2/3-2/19. I’m in quarantine @ Travisairforce base in CA for another 14 days ! I can confirm everything Wolf said about the onsught of Chinese & other tourists in Kyoto!
This cov-19 virus is no joke!
We were just informed yesterday that the CDC requires all evacuees to have both a throat swab & a nasal swab, wait 3 days for the test results before anyone will be released. We have our temperatures monitored 2 X a day!
I think the markets have not yet accurately priced in the amount of disruption that will occur worldwide at least through March if not longer because who knows if we’re getting accurate numbers out of China even though the CDC has a team over there now?
James:. Thanks for the update! Hope all goes well for you!
That team is not allowed to tour the epicenter. They are being allowed to tour less affected areas. The last thing China wants are any outsiders being allowed to see how bad it is. Its strictly a PR move by China to suggest they are being “transparent”. As for the WHO, they are bought and paid for and the director is a PR mouthpiece for China.
While this virus is being described as less lethal than SARS, it is most lethal among older people but not so much for young children. I wonder how this affects the psychology of the epidemic. Most of the real wealth in the world lives with the 50+ crowd. When the rich people are fearful, I’m guessing that governmental responses will be influenced in a way that’s different than responses to typical outbreaks. Don’t know where I’m going with this, but I’m curious to see how things play out.
On another note, as a viral immunologist, I am interested in the Covid-19 pathogenesis. The selective lethality in older persons is probably indicative of the importance for T cells to fight this virus. Successful vaccination of the 50+ crowd will be challenging. I think that the best approach will be herd immunity through vaccination of the entire population to limit overall transmission. My two cents for the day.
Vaccine two months to a year and a half depending on which scare story you read. Anyway, considering that flu is a normal and expected annual event resulting in tens of thousands of deaths over all age groups, with mass voluntary inoculation based on forecasted strain variant, the draconian measures taken by the government seem … extreme.
Is it a flu sort of virus, or something else, as has been suggested by some of the more strident stories?
Anyway, rich people fearful shouldn’t taint the official response – the money goes to the next generation and they’re the ones that spend. Cynicism works both ways.
I have zero doubt that much of the publicity is tied to the money that can be made from this scare; as it always is with news about medical problems and solutions. In this case you can add political leverage to the mix.
Even with relatively local problems like Ebola it was all about the money IMHO, and not about what would be the best way (for the locals or the world at large) to prevent, diagnose, treat etc.
We can’t vaccinate against everything and we don’t need to. People have survived without vaccines for 99,99% of our history and probably to the benefit of our gene pool (just look at the huge amount of viruses in our genome …). We just need to use some common sense and avoid the most stupid recent practices related to big city living, livestock farming etc.
‘People have survived without vaccines for 99,99% of our history…’
If by ‘people’ you mean the human race the sentence is technically correct. However exactly the same is true of the sentence: ‘People have survived without medicine for 99.99 of our history.’
It’s a different story if we talk about persons and individual fates. I’m dating myself here but my elementary school teacher (50?) had scars from small pox. This was common and often fatal to infants.
Milk maids had a reputation for beauty because they often caught cow pox a mild non- scarring disease that gave them immunity from smallpox. This lead to the first vaccinations by Dr. Edward Jenner who gave people cow pox to prevent small pox.
Today small pox is eradicated, existing in only two places: A Russian lab and a CIA lab.
Its defeat makes no difference to the human race writ large but every difference to the individuals saved.
Uhm, the people of 99.99% of our history are dead
@nick kelly:
I’m not against all vaccines, but you really have to weigh the cons and the benefits – which is difficult because they can differ strongly on an individual basis. When I was young we had four recommended vaccinations, small pox one of them. The huge amount of vaccines that is “recommended” nowadays is bad for the (epi)gene pool and healthcare systems in the long run. Many of those have very little benefit except for the companies who produce them. And even for the individual, some vaccines that protect at young age have bad consequences like auto-immune disease at older age. IMHO the world would be a lot healthier if we ditch 90-99% of current medicine use; it’s all about the money and not about what is best for the health of the population.
@char:
they don’t have a vaccine against death yet but I bet they are working on it ;)
This isn’t a flu virus. That is, it’s not an influenza. Corona viruses are single stranded RNA viruses – structurally and evolutionarily distinct from influenza. Notably, this means that it will likely be more easily controlled by vaccination (two reasons: lack of cycle through bird/swine intermediates and lack of a segmented genome). In short, it’s probably middle of the road in vaccine difficulty. I think that something could work within a few months but deployment will take a little longer. Probably one year before wide availability.
I’ve read vaccine is 1-3 years away. In any case…not any time soon.
I keep telling myself to let it go BUT it is completely false to say the flu results ‘in tens of thousands of deaths over all age groups’
The fatality rate for flu in young adults is less than .01%. In patients over 80 the rate is well into double digits, up to 50%.
The whistle blower doctor who died was 34.
But at least we’re moving on from ‘it’s just a cold’ ist a sut sots m m
The CDC estimated that up to 42.9 million people got sick during the 2018-2019 flu season in the U.S. No less than 647,000 people were hospitalized. And 61,200 died.
If you’ve read about previous attempts to make vaccines for similar coronaviruses you might have noted they were deemed unsuitable due to mild side effects like causing lung failure and sensitizing the patient to future infection of similar strains. Additionally, if you’ve been following this closely at all, you’ll also note that this strain is mutating so quickly vaccines are unlikely to perform their intended role.
Yes, many of such vaccines have big fundamental problems, but those are seldom mentioned in publicity for the general public; it’s all about the money.
Here in Florida, Carnival has ads on TV for $285 cruises. God help Disney if a visitor at their park turns up infected.
Here in Tampa Bay area similar, as i noted above a few minutes ago.. but, as a long time analyst of various types of challenges, born and raised in SWFL, but long time SF Bay Resident,,,, it appears to me that it is only a matter of when COVID 19 shows up here in FL,,, and God help us all when it does; mainly due to the continuing presence here of so many many folks who have come here to ”get away” from their birth communities elsewhere in USA,, start over,,, etc., and still bring all their prejudice and, what are we calling it these days,,, something else,, but it still exists here in large measure and will result in absolute non compliance with any reasonable measures to contain this, or for that matter, any virus, etc.
What do three or four commas in a row mean, grammatically? I am puzzled.
Zantetsu:. It means a pause or break.
This is not really an official way to imply pauses or break in thoughts or sentences. This more reflects the writer’s personal writing style than anything official!
It could also be something as simple as where the comma and period symbols are located on the screen keyboard! The comma might be more convenient to tap than the period!
The problem with the English language is there are really no rules! The English language is rather flexible! This kind of gives everyone using English, a license to murder the language!
And when there are so called official English language rules, they are immediately broken or murdered!
The real problem with the English language and it’s lack of structure can be traced back to all the people who invaded and occupied England!
So English in the end, is a collection of the worst features of all of these languages rolled into one!
Actually, they’re called ellipses, and 3 dots is the form with a space before and aft. It means either pause, or if extraneous text has been eliminated but doesn’t interfere with the sense of the sentence you are quoting.
to Wes:
No rules in the English language is probably a feature, not a bug. You can get away with anything, and people still understand, especially in foreign environments, whether spoken or written others can be understood (instead of being ridiculed for trying as happens in many other languages).
The funniest thing is when the language police correct someone (NOT referring to Wes’s comment in this instance), they most often get it wrong due ignorance of the regional factor, or just plain grammar being wrong.
Robt:. Since Veteran didn’t follow any known rules of the English language, we can’t really report him to the language police!
Glad you can still remember the proper names for this device!
A very good English teacher once pounded all of this stuff into my brain, but these days my grey cells are mush!
I now take the easy way out by defaulting to “there are no rules” so I don’t have to remember any names!
You are right about the “feature” part verses “bug” part!
However, for non English speakers trying to learn English, not having any rules drives them crazy!
WES: There most certainly are grammatical rules in English, the thing is that most people are unaware of them, even though they may unknowingly use them and most probably would be aware if someone did not follow them.
Take a look here for a more coherent explanation than I can easily give;
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary
One thing that always sticks out to me is the difference between the general UK & US written media style guides where a sports team is referred to as ‘they’ in the UK, but ‘it’ in the US.
PS – Maybe not every line in your comments requires an explanation mark: just a thought.
Just for your reference there are several English language manuals such as the Chicago Manual of Style that comprehensively cover punctuation. My personal favorite for English usage is Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Scholars do try the best they can with a moving target.
Just to be as clear as possible, and kudos to Wes and others below:
As a once and always since aspiring reporter ( Daily Californian) as well as an editor of one of the ”neighborhood mackeral wrappers”, ”Grassroots.. of Berserkeley during the time, decades ago, when some of my old ”lefty” friends there thought there was actually going to be another ”revolution” sooner rather than later, I was taught ALL the rules to be published, etc…
And, recently, reflecting on those rules, along with all the others taught me by Mrs. Eastman Nuckolls, my 7th grade teacher of English, etc., I have decided to let them all go where they may, and just have fun with all the possible punctuation, etc…
Thank you Wes, for your lucidity and liquidity and light!!
Almost as good as the light Wolf brings,,, not to mention the apparently well meaning, very polite, and knowledgeable folks commenting here from all over the world…
Back at the beginning of the GFC they had this kind of pricing as well. I figured out with the room and meals alone it was a bargain, cheaper than a home rental. You can live cheaply on a cruise ship for this money, if it doesn’t kill you.
Lets see how long it will take for the finance industry to cook up COVD19 options for that:
The Premium will pay for a 4 Weeks Discount Cruise bundled with a life insurance with the owner of the option as the beneficiary.
The issuers shaves some points off both ends. Longer durations costs more due to the incubation period.
Disney has weathered measles outbreaks at their parks, this too will be a blip.
The CoV scare hasn’t reached Netherlands yet; our CDC says no quarantine required for released Dutch Westerdam passengers – just in time to participate in the national carnival madness ;(
I look forward to a big decline in tourist activity because it has started to disrupt my little city in the last few years, and our government is deaf to the many complaints from ordinary citizens. We aren’t close to any airport so it’s nothing like Amsterdam or San Francisco, and Chinese or Japanese tourists are still a small minority. But ever bigger cruiseships are a problem for sure. You can’t run a city just by attracting loads of tourists who walk around in the city center in massive queues for a few hours, cause all kinds of costs and trouble and spend very little money (because apart from the beach and some sightseeing, there really isn’t anything to do over here). Only a privileged few players benefit massively and all the other locals get to enjoy the downside.
A summer with some relaxed calm for the locals would be great. Even better if this starts to hurt the countless B&B’s, AirBNB rentals and foreign equity locusts who have totally destroyed our housing market. If this continues for a bit longer it will wreak havoc in my part of the country that has gambled everything on tourism in the last few years, and destroyed almost all remaining nature for building speculator properties. But if this happens I will be cheering because I think you should never put all your eggs in one basket. And if a certain activity requires huge sacrifices from almost everyone, everyone should benefit too and not just a few RE and tourism tycoons.
You could move inland, maybe to Fargo or whatever is the Dutch equivalent. (How do you do that little sarcasm punctuation?)
As I’m reading your depressing comment about a small town overrun by zombie cruiseline tourists, an ad pops up in the adjoining column for senior cruises to Alaska. This continuous feed of content-related ads provides a sort of surrealist meta commentary on content in Wolfstreet.
If this scare pops our tourism bubble it could become a nice area again, no need to move then :) I’m going to see what happens, maybe the coming two week EU vacation period provides a first glimpse of what to expect this summer.
There is some discussion in politics about allowing owners of “vacation homes” (often speculator properties) to rent them out as official residence to locals all year. If the tourists stay away that will be a good incentive to change the rules and cure the local housing problems. The amount of speculator properties is many times bigger than the local housing shortage. If the bubble pops I doubt these properties will automatically go up 10% or so every year even if they are never used, so owners will have to find another way to extract value.
I guess our tourist problem is becoming quite common in Europe though, many historic cities are overrun by tourists and authorities usually are deaf to complaints from the locals and only start acting when it is WAY too late.
Are they already advertising cruises to destinations that the CoV virus doesn’t like? ;(
In Portugal we’ve the same housing problem due to tourist flooding. Many unemployed from the last crisis found in AirBnb the solution for their problems. Many are leveraged with very thin margins. If (when) this tourism bubble pops many portuguese families will found themseves in a pool full of sharks. Eitherway, portuguese government and municipalities already opened the hunting season to airbnb owners, with all sort of new taxes.
But, I think this tourism floading is the result of the democratisation of traveling, due to airbnb, low cost airlines, etc. In Portugal, these days, someone with the minimum salary can afford to have a yearly trip to any european city. We can’t take that away from them…
Taxes are not the problem, banning is
@Paulo:
I would have less problems with Airbnb if they paid taxes (they don’t pay ANY here, while some Airbnb owners in my city make more money from it than someone with a good job) and would have to stick to similar regulations as a hotel regarding safety, rubbish, car parking and other issues that now cause big trouble for the neighborhood.
Even if you think the Airbnb owners are entitled to some extra money, the big problem is that they are often wrecking the local housing market with the result that a small (often well-connected) group profits hugely, and a very large group suffers badly. IMHO this is unacceptable and governments are way too late in dealing with this problem.
As to “democratization of traveling” that isn’t a universal right I agree with given the very bad consequences on a worldwide scale. It’s very similar to how free money (debt) is killing the economy. Better make tourism far more expensive and have fewer but better (less tourists …) vacations. If you don’t have the money for such faraway vacations you could still have a vacation close to home like almost everyone would 1-2 generations ago.
Regional carnival madness. It is only a big fest in the South. And Tourism is the only industry that Zeeland has IMHO
Zeeland used to be a major (main even?) center of science and technology development in the 16th/17th century, after then things slowly went downhill due to farmers taking control of the regional government. We now have dirty industry they don’t want anywhere else, farming and lately lots of tourism. There have been some good initiatives for alternatives (e.g. internet/media in the nineties, and aquatic biotechnology about ten years ago) but they went basically nowhere because our politicians no longer appreciate science and technology and only understand what their business relations are serving, drinks and stones.
What is keeping Carnival stock price afloat?
The 4% dividend and the fact that investors have Moronavirus.
Moronavirus!!!!
Hahahahahahaha … made my day.
Why didn’t I think of this?
You need to get a lawyer to ensure you own the rights to that asap.
That was clever – nicely done.
The domain name: moronavirus.com is at this time available to buy, LOL
Some Chinese eateries down 70% in Vancouver BC (areas of high Chinese population like Richmond). Other type stores admit to being down 45%.
My friends just laugh when I ask if they are traveling anywhere by air, and these are folks that like to travel. The answer is typically, “Wellllll, we were thinking about _________, but we’ll just wait and see for awhile.”
And now there are the jokes. When an issue becomes a punchline there is a big problem. People I know just came back from Thailand a few weeks ago. They were asked to self-quarantine, and did for awhile, but I noticed the husband was out and about before the two weeks were up.
I absolutely loathe air travel and going through customs, (everything about it) so it is only idle curiosity that I follow these stats. Our big late summer planned trip is to the middle of nowhere for grayling and char fishing; visiting where I once worked and lived. No crowds. No worries, mate. I think they call it, a staycation.
Paulo:. Char fishing likely means some where up north!
Sounds like black fly and mosquito country!
I grew up in northern Labrador/Quebec so know about them nasty winged critters!
Beijing just reportedly went on “Wuhan level lockdown”, which is more severe in terms of anyone being able to go outside. Clearly cases and deaths are going under-reported, as the 40 furnaces just sent to Wuhan are working overtime just to catch up. Even if fatality rate is only 2%, that’s 20 times worse than the flu which is 0.1%. At some point China needs to come clean on the real number of cases, as the world is being impacted by this more and more everyday. It could be another 60 days or longer before people can really go back to factories.
Can Walmart last that long without its China sourced goods ? Can Americans live with shortages in key goods ? What about the world ? If this doesn’t cause American company CEO’s to re-think their sourcing diversity (or rather lack thereof), then nothing will. Trump was spot on to force companies to seriously re-consider their trade relations with China. Thats a true leader. He took it on the chin bigtime for the tariffs with economists whacking him over the knoggin repeatedly saying they never work. Yes, tariffs may have been short term painful, but not nearly as devastating as losing your goods sourcing completely for weeks or months on end. This COVID-19 debacle goes way beyond the tourism industry. A whole lot of firms are going to go belly up, and not just in China, with ‘just-in-time’ cash flow being the only thing previously that kept them afloat. JIT in both goods and cash flow, goes to JTL. (Just too late). Especially with the gargantuan levels of debt corporately and world wide.
Funny how there are headlines circulating that imply or outright claim the worst is over.
I suppose the strategy is, assume most people don’t read beyond the headline, and certainly do not dig deep for the truth (…because they can’t handle and really don’t want it – if it’s bad).
Beijing on Wuhan level lockdown? Wow. Wow Wow Wow.
Anyone notice how that one article I posted indicates that it is not just the 300M migrant workers who are afraid to go back to the factories — it’s the workers who live in Hubei (and some other provinces) and in Wuhan itself — who are refusing to go back to work.
The scale of this problem is off the charts.
Anyone care to volunteer to fly to Wuhan and run a lathe? Or attach wire a to terminal b?
If you won’t go then they sure as hell won’t go.
Adam Smith might call this the Invisible HAN of Markets
I think this will be the pinprick that deflates the Higher Education Bubble. Chinese students paying full price at private colleges or out of state tuition at state schools are the marginal consumers that keep much of the college/university system afloat. Small private colleges ,outside of the top tier, are under much stress lately, as we have seen two in ,Oregon alone ,announce their closing recently . If this drags on and the Chinese students don’t make it back from New Years break, or don’t enroll for next semester or next year it will be a financial smack-down that will take down a good chunk of the college system.
In the UK, Cambridge University has built -and is building – thousands of housing units to accommodate Chinese students, often graduates with families.
A bubble I would be delighted to see pop, it’s all hideous…..
Chinese travellers contributed about A$12 billion to the Australian economy – or 27% of the total amount spent by all international visitors.
275,000 of the 1.44 million Chinese visits to Australia – about 20% – were for educational purposes.
Chinese students stayed an average of 124 nights in Australia before going home and spent an average of A$27,000. This is more than any other nationality. The average spent by all international students was A$22,000.
Chinese students accounted for just shy of 58% – or A$7.1 billion – of all the money spent by Chinese visitors.
Right now there is a entry ban on Chinese into Australia!
Austrailan Education Scam is totally built on full paying chinese & other East+south asian students
Yes … GLOBALISM is in its Death rows … Thanks God !
And .. as noted when i visited San Francisco 12 years ago :
Jack London has left that City …long ..long time ago
I dont think globalism is on its death bed, i think centrally planned globalisim is on its death bed :P
Went to a nice Korean restaurant here in Cairo last week….they had a sign on the door in Chinese saying….No Chinese welcome. Yikes.
This virus is bringing out the worst in people, and it’s just getting started.
next week sign on Chinese restaurants: No Koreans welcome.
;(
“No Mainland chinese please ” notice hangs in some Hong Kong eateries.
“No Chinese Plese” hangs in many restaurents in South Korea.
Chinese students were asked not to come to college in Korea & asked to learn by net.
Seperate block in hostel was allotted to chinese students.
WR: since you are going that way and speak the language (no doubt with help from wife) you might consider doing a few interviews for a piece I would tentatively title: ‘The Plague Ship: How Japan trapped thousands and turned a dozen infections into over 500.’
There have been many suggestions of exaggeration and hyperbole about this disease but the news from this Princess cruise ship is beyond fiction. I let out an audible ‘holy sh&t’ this AM reading the Globe and Mail. A top Japanese epidemiologist came aboard as a volunteer and was horrified. He says it was as bad or worse than Africa and he was more scared on ship than when working with Ebola. He talked to one female staff who said she thought she was infected but was still working, moving about the ship. ‘Do you want to infect everyone?’ he asked staff.
I’ve seen a photo of the doomed carrier Lexington after the order to abandon ship with hundreds of sailors jumping from the flight deck maybe 5 ? stories into the ocean. The caption: ‘Crew abandons ship for the relative safety of the ocean’
Best thing you could have done on that ship: over the side.
Predictions: there will be a book about this and there are big problems ahead for the Japanese govt. They took a manageable situation and turned it into a disaster.
even worse: there might be a Hollywood movie about it, with lots of wrong sponsoring :(
It sounds like you are describing Fukushima
Now that you mention it, any tourist/athlete health problems after the Tokyo Olympics can now be attributed to lingering Cov and not to radiation or contaminated food, so blame China. CoV offers easy solutions for so many current problems ;(
BTW, would be funny if this virus accidentally pricks the Everything Bubble. The first big financial mania, Tulip Mania, was also pricked by a virus, although most people never heard about that detail ;)
Has everyone here booked:
The 34th Forbes Cruise for Investors. Cruise Fares: As low as $4,649 per person!!
Get tickets while they’re hot!!
What was the alternative to quarantine on board? We are talking about 3700 people. Imagine if the Japanese government decided to requisition the largest hotels in Tokyo instead. Then you’d have a contaminated cruise ship AND Tokyo’s biggest hotels on lockdown. I’m sure that would have been popular.
Besides, from the beginning, I’ve suspected the Japanese government, if not the WHO and CDC, wanted the chance to get some ‘uncontaminated’ data on the incubation times and transmission rates of this virus, and what better place to do it than a isolated population on a cruise ship.
Agree with both points. I suspect other countries are also trying to get their “samples” by fiddling with the protocols.
The Japanese government could have taken better care of the potentially uninfected passengers, but that’s easy to say in hindsight. There is very little experience with such problems and maybe most patients were already infected by the time authorities realized they can be infected without showing symptoms or positive diagnostic test. We still don’t understand very well how the virus spreads, even a docked cruise ship isn’t 100% quarantine
1800 tents with electric heating sand a fridge filled with 3 weeks of food is not that difficult
A cruise ship is a kind of catch-22. One of the reasons they are popular is that they represent little private enterprise zones free from the interference and regulations of actual countries. So they can employee cheap labor ( and thus offer good service) etc. But when problems happen aboard you can’t be guaranteed the support and attention of the government in whatever location you are docked. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
When you enter national waters you become subject to the laws of that country. A cruise ship is not a sovereign state or embassy.
Related trivia: the book Fatal Voyage by William Deverell relates the true story of a murder on a cruise ship. There was controversy about which country would have the trial based on where the ship was at the time of the murder.
The decisions re the Princess docked at Yokohama were not made by the ship’s crew, they were made by the Japanese.
Re: what else could Japan do, take everyone to hotels? I’ll go with the Japanese doctor: they could have done better. A first- world country of over 100 million can find hospital space for 3700 people but when this began it only needed to find space for a few dozen. A ship’s crew are not medical personnel. Even if the passengers were taken to several sports stadiums or military bases you would not have a stewardess who thought she was infected delivering food etc.
Nick Kelly, the key words you are leaving out is ‘ unknown biohazard’. Sure 3700 people with broken arms, noravirus or e-coli can be moved to domestic hospitals for treatment but that wasn’t the problem.
Putting 3700 potentially infectious patients in hospitals for 14 days is expensive. Let’s say $5,000 per day per person and that is probably understating it. To Japan’s credit it did take those known to be infected off the ship and put them in hospital.
Do the math and ask yourself why should Japan pay some $20 million per day for 14 days or more to solve Carnivals problem and put its own population and medical personnel at greater risk?
The point made by that Japanese expert -he has himself taken down his original video but has given a longer press conference – is that the ship was being managed by bureaucrats and disaster management people, not doctors experienced within that infectious disease specialism – hence, as to be expected, the unsafe mess on board.
What are your sources, nick? Do you have any or are you just going to quote doomsdayers and tinfoil hat wearers?
I gave the source: The Globe and Mail newspaper.
Might be fake news although the comment above yours from Xabier seems to have heard it from somewhere. Guess we’ll see.
Zantetsu:. I have also read some of the details of how the quarantine was carried out on the Diamond Princess.
Ship staff were never quarantined! They continued to quarter and work together plus delivered food/services.
Non balcony people were allowed to wonder the ship’s decks every day. Then there is the issue of common air conditioning system.
Then there was the issue of the Japanese not being able to test more than a 100 people per day on the ship!
I seriously doubt any medical doctor would consider such a system quarantining!
Professor Kentaro Iwato (kobe university ) made valid points in his you tube interviw (taken down next day ) and exposed japan too rigid system of dealing with crisis. Dr was booted out of ship with in 6 hours as all Jap Govt officials understood what he exposed of failures in their qurantine procedures. But They did not want to change what they were doing . Japan did spent lot of money by treating all the confirmed cases. They gave even a iphone for each passenger in quarantine.
Even now after qurantine – they are releasing less passengers every day due their limited testing capacity .
Professor Iwata’s video interview of the poor quarantine which led to more people getting sick :
https://twitter.com/i/status/1229994814956982272
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=2488767&CategoryId=13936
https://japantoday.com/category/national/Professor-denies-he-was-pressured-to-remove-videos-on-virus-hit-ship
Wake me up when the virus kills 10000 US citizens. How many people die of Pneumonia in the USA every year ? Remind me, someone. Is it 80,000 or 100,000 ?
I read plenty of the bad news economic headlines year after year after year, so as to have my finger on the pulse…. and then i am reminded that the (most relevant) 70% services economy has been doing great year after year after year.
Oh, and Tesla (part of the tanking goods economy) is expected to grow revenue by 30% next year. Yes, markets are forward looking,
Did anyone expect to hear an announcement about the $2 billion stock offering ? No. of course not.
Yes, i have never seen it the global economy this good in my lifetime.. and i am 51 years old.
Set your alarm for about fall time. September I’d wager.
It is high tourist season in SW Florida. The roads have more traffic with northerners down here for the winter. Some are from the states, others are from Canada and a few are from Europe. It is warmer than usual. In April many will drive and fly back north. The WHO is optimistic about recent Chinese virus statistics. Korea has quarantined 2.5 million. Japan is suffering a downturn.
To me, the way people are reacting to this new unknown virus is perfectly rational.
Since most people don’t trust their own government, never mind some one else’s government, they know that when it gets serious, governments have to lie!
Same goes to the main stream media! Can’t trust them to tell the truth either!
So naturally, people are doing what is in their own best interests, until they know more about this new unknown.
Hey Nick,
I was on the Diamond Princess & am now in quarantine it the USA.
I lived inTokyo for 10 yr’s, married to a Zjapanese for 40 yr’s & I don’t blame the Japanese foe what happened in Yokohama.
Do you know that it was actually the “Coronavirus team” @ the US embassy in Tokyo & the CDC & the US dept of Health & Human Reasoures that has put the first waves of evacuees health at GREATER risk on the chartered flight back to the US than before?
I discovered that there were people who were on the flight who were from the PRC , 65 miles SE of Beijing! All cruise passengers were led to believe that ONLY passengers WHO HAD BEEN TESTED
& we’re NEGATIVE would be on that plane bsvk to the US.
FURTHERMORE, 2 out of 4 portapotties in the charted cargo plane were “out of order.” Big mess.
And the passengers spent 6 hours on buses with other passengers BEFORE they could get off & get on the plane which took 11 hours! That’s 17 hours+ of exposure to 14 passengers were were only put in”isolation” 6.5 hours AFTER the plane took off!
The CDC & Dept. of Health & Human Services really misled the passengers on the Diamond
Princess!
Check out the reporting from BBC & NYT.
You begin by saying you don’t blame the Japanese and instead of making that case you immediately turn to the botched US evacuation by plane and never return.
BTW: I’m just going by what the Japanese epidemiologist said.
Where did I say the US did a good job? I saw the video. Plastic sheets creating a quarantine area. Port- a potties etc. But there is one connection: both are trying to quarantine on board a craft: one on a boat and one on a plane. I suggest neither is the right place.
Anyway, I hope you get out OK.
The CDC did not mislead.
The CDC’s decision was not to allow sick passengers to board.
The state department and the Trump administration overruled them.
“The state department and the Trump administration overruled them.”
No, a couple of di ck heads at the State Department and CDC let it happen againt the wishes of Mr Trump.
Once in a while I wish people would actually read the real news and stop blaiming everything on Mr Trump
If you care about your immune system, go Wheat Belly Protocol. Here is no grain pizza recipe with dough you can use for all kinds of foods:
There are a ton of different versions I’ve found for the original Fathead pizza dough. This is my version that was about 20 pizzas worth of experimenting.
1 ½ cup of mozzarella or provolone. Use a cheese that is drier and heavy on fat. I get aged provolone at Woodman’s and it is perfect for this recipe.
2 tbsp. cream cheese.
Put both cheeses in a nonstick skillet on medium heat and keep it moving until it is melted and SMOOTH. Smooth is the key, all the fat is coming out of the cheese at this point.
Turn off the heat, and with a silicone spatula, mix in one cup almond flour, one beaten egg, and ½ tsp vinegar (whatever you have).
Keep turning and kneading the dough and after a minute or so, it will start to spring back a little, like actual dough.
Roll out the dough ball between 2 sheets of parchment so it covers a sheet pan. Peel off the top sheet of parchment, slide the crust (on the parchment) onto the sheet pan and dock with a fork to eliminate bubbles. Cook at 425 degrees until golden. 10-15 minutes. It has to be cooked on parchment for the initial cooking at least. It is easier to keep it on the parchment the whole time.
Remove from oven, sauce, cheese and toppings go on, and back in the oven for 10-15 minutes and a flash with the broiler makes the top nice and crispy.
Drier, fatty cheese is the best.
I use Bob’s Red Mill almond flour. It is more coarse than regular flour, and it gives it a nice feel. I’ve tried finer ground flour, and it doesn’t seem to have the same mouth feel of the coarse.
The vinegar is optional, but it does give the dough a yeast flavor, it’s amazing what that little splash of flavor brings to the party. Large or jumbo eggs are what I use.
I actually sauce with tomato paste from the tube (about 1-2 tbsp) with fresh garlic and oregano.
Whatever you do, don’t put olive oil on the crust. It will not soak in, I tried it once. It was a mess, a smoky mess.
The same recipe can be used to make crackers and flatbread, and I’m going to give calzones a whirl too. Pot pie crust, pigs in a blanket, etc.
This is the same stuff I use for lasagna noodles too. Works really well.
Once you make it a couple of times, it will all make sense and then you start to see all the possibilities for it.
Enjoy!
— Randy
Wolf can’t disagree with you on the travel front seeing it first hand as an employee. Of the airline business however the real estate business in SF is booming with sales prices coming in well over $1000 sq ft. Seems the Chinese are still buying real estate site unseen along with some young tech yahoos who assume the Gravy train is here to stay. A quick search of home sales on Zillow will make this clear as day
A Realtor in the Bay Area who comments here as well just told me the opposite. He expects sellers to come to grips with this absence of Chinese investors by late spring and early summer, and reduce prices to where demand is. So we’ll see. RE moves very slowly and it takes a long time for the actual data to move beyond noise, so I think we’ll see the impact, if any, in a few months.
I haven’t been out of the country for more than six months. We had a trip planned to Japan in late January but we postponed it for March 20 (not because of COVID 19) of this year. I told my husband last night that we should wait and see what happens with this virus before traveling to Asia again. If our departure date were today, I wouldn’t go. No way.
That’s what we’re doing. Japan just got a level 1 CDC travel notice today. Only time will tell…
I just got back from Japan last month, it was ok, normal, before this deal.
Now I’m totally staying away from airports, mall’s, and wherever the tourists hang-out and/or eat.
I was here during SARS and other recent crisis in the past ten years, you don’t want to have so much as a sneeze or cough if your flying during these times, automatic quarantine, and if you didn’t have it, you will get it in ‘quarantine’. God forbid if you have a temp, they use those cheap $3 Chinese laser gun’s now, and if your over normal or even slightly your suspect, last time they used the their imagers, which are infrared FLIR video devices which at least are in color and a real sick person has a distinct thermal halo. These cheap lasers don’t really mean much of anything. I worry about the ramifications of a false positive on a flight with a laser, cuz that means off to quarantine for full ‘inspection’ you go. Which means you lose your flight, days, and luggage if your lucky;
I can’t even imagine the kind of death wish someone must have to dare get Ina cruise ship right now.
The Robots only read headlines because content is paywalled.
Getting the robots on board is how one boost “The Markets”.
Boosting “The Markets” is the only purpose of civilisation after capitalism becomes “advanced”.
Coming out of Hawaii, even though they have the virus they have no test-kits, they have no plan to obtain test kits.
This is telling, in Asia everybody got ‘test-kits’ last month,
I think the rest of USA is going to be the same, nobody pre-orders and start’s making the test-kit, they wait for somebody else to do it, and/or pay for it. Maybe in USA your supposed to find a test-kit on ebay and admin yourself??
Should be real interesting in coming months to see if rest of USA responds this way, by doing nothing.
The Virus Is Interrupting Supply Chains From Watches to Lobsters
Chaos reigns from the high seas to the factory floor after key manufacturers in China shut down or ships are held in port.
A Hong Kong watch maker who can’t get coils or wheels. New Zealand lobsters released back into the wild. A San Diego game studio facing delays to its latest fantasy board games.
The coronavirus outbreak that has hobbled China’s economy is increasingly ricocheting through the world economy and supply chains.
To gauge the impact, Bloomberg News reporters asked businesses around the world to share their experiences.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-22/coronavirus-hobbles-supply-chains-from-watches-to-lobsters?srnd=premium-asia
If the Coronavirus truly becomes a global pandemic, the economic consequences could be quite severe. Aside from global trade literally stalling (with even the Canadian and Mexican borders shuttered to all travel, trade, and commerce), the economic shocks will also affect the American health care industry to the point where they’ll be next in line for government bailouts. The health insurance industry might not survive at all. They could be literally wiped out. Maybe that usher in the age of universal health care.
Seeing interesting movements in the off the plan property industry in Australia, definite impact from Chinese buyers being more cautious.