Airlines, travel agencies panic over Japan's entry restrictions

Airlines and travel agencies, already hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak, are taking another hit from Japan's recent decision to tighten entry restrictions on people traveling from Korea, company officials said Sunday.

Asiana Airlines, the nation's second-biggest airline, suspended all flights to Japan from Monday to the end of March for the first time since the company launched its Seoul-Tokyo route.

Top flag carrier Korean Air will suspend flights on 16 out of 17 routes to Japan, except for the Incheon-Narita route, from Monday until March 28.

Budget carriers, most of which have been under emergency management following a sharp decline in air travel demand due to the fast spread of the COVID-19 epidemic, have also suspended all or most flights on their routes to Japan.

Jeju Air, the nation's largest low-cost carrier, has decided to operate only two routes from Incheon to Tokyo and Osaka, and suspend others.

“The number of customers has already decreased, and is expected to decline further, but we decided to keep at least the two routes for passenger convenience,” a Jeju Air official said.

On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Tokyo would quarantine all visitors from Korea and China for two weeks on arrival, starting Monday, and suspend its 90-day visa-waiver program, citing the need to contain the contagious disease.

In response, the Korean government announced it would also suspend a visa waiver program for Japanese visitors and invalidate already issued visas from midnight Monday.

This is expected to lead to a sharp decline in inbound and outbound travelers between Korea and Japan. This adds to woes at air carriers and travel agencies that have suffered rapidly falling profits, with fears over COVID-19, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, having led to an increasing number of tourists canceling their overseas trips.

Travel agencies are also in a poor state, with some small enterprises even expected to file for bankruptcy.

Japanese travelers account for about 20 percent of tourists visiting Korea, according to officials.

“The suspension of the visa-waiver program is a very strong measure, which will exert considerable influence on demand for travel,” an official from a Seoul-based travel firm said. “Who will want to travel to Japan when the country announced a plan to quarantine visitors from Korea?”

The airline and travel industries have already been having a hard time since last year due mainly to lower demand for travel on Japanese routes.

Last July, Japan began to impose restrictions on exports of selected key industrial materials to Korean firms, triggering an anti-Japan boycott here, under which Koreans opted not to travel to the neighboring country.