As the threat of the COVID-19 coronavirus continues to spread, travel reservations in China are taking a hit, according to data analyzed by travel network TravelgateX.
According to TravelgateX’s Big Data team, which evaluated 20,000 daily hotel reservations, 3,000 million hotel searches and more than 2 terabytes of data analyzed in TravelgateX, travel reservations in China fell 79% during the month of January; the percentage indicates an increase of more than 130% over the cancellation rate for December 2019.
The Spain-based company also finds that the volume of reservations registered in its marketplace to China is already 90% less in February compared to January.
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Further, when comparing the volume of reservations registered in February 2020 versus February 2019, the fall is 95%.
In January, it also registered a fall of almost 40% compared to December.
The cancellation ratio in February is registering at the “highest rate” of 260%, TravelgateX finds, which is 229% more than in January.
Additionally, for the first time, the number of cancellations is exceeding reservations.