Last week, Bertie was in Vietnam with the extended family. Whenever he sees a wide, un-dug road with orderly traffic, the harried Mumbaikar in him sighs. When he sees clean sidewalks, the non-tobacco-chewing Indian in him sighs, and when he sees the hotel rates in South-East Asia, the Taj Inner Circle member in him sighs.

Bertie cannot do much about the state of the roads in Mumbai or the ‘jubaan kesari’ crowd, but the exorbitant hotel rates at home are something he decided to investigate. The properties he stayed at in Vietnam were priced at half of what a comparable hotel in India would cost, and what intrigued Bertie was that this was never the case till before the pandemic. 

Analysts in India blame the standstill in construction work during the pandemic for the delay in completing new hotels. This, coupled with a demand surge in the form of revenge travel and social media-induced mimetic desire, has meant that hotel rates have surged. At a recent Indian Hotels meeting, Bertie was proudly told that the hotel chain was making double-digit return on capital for the first time in its history.

But all these explanations, thought Bertie, would be largely true for South-East Asia as well, and yet the room rates had not risen as much. Bertie posed this question to the duty manager of the hotel where he stayed in Hanoi. She did not give a straight answer at first, but Bertie is a seasoned interrogator, and he was eventually able to tease out the truth. 

Absence of Chinese tourists

The reason was Chinese tourists, or more precisely, the lack of them. Before the pandemic, the Chinese used to arrive at tourist hotspots of South-East Asia in droves, but that behaviour changed after the reopening. While the exact reason for this change is not known, it is likely to be the increased cautiousness of the Chinese consumer given the bleak economic prospects at home.

Bertie was told that the net result has been that foreign tourist arrivals for most of South-East Asia are still running below 2019 levels, mainly due to the lack of Chinese tourists. The hope is that tourists from India will fill the gap, which has led to many countries easing visa requirements for Indians. 

Bertie wasn’t surprised to hear Hindi on the beaches of Ninh Binh and see paratha in every breakfast buffet. On a full plane back to Mumbai, Bertie worried that outbound travel could cause a large outflow in the Balance of Payment math after overseas education. 

Over time, he reflected, if we don’t get our act together on quality of life, well-heeled Indians would make a beeline for overseas tax havens, wide roads and pristine foreign beaches.