Hotels, tour operators register surge in booking cancellations

Kampala, Uganda  | THE INDEPENDENT |  The tourism and hospitality industry in Uganda is dealing with the worst surge in cancellation of bookings as the global coronavirus outbreak takes a toll on businesses. 

Jean Byamugisha, the Uganda Hotel Owners Association chairperson, said many people who were scheduled to travel to Uganda have cancelled their bookings and many are asking for the refund of their money.

The surge in booking cancellations come as most countries reported cases of the virus. Uganda has no case at the moment.

Last week, however, the Uganda Tourism Board recommended to travellers from China, South Korea, Japan, Iran, and Italy to “maintain bookings but delay their travel until a later date when disease globally contained and no longer considered an outbreak.”

Many who had booked responded by cancelling bookings. They also quoted the UTB statement to ask for the refund of their money.  

Byamugisha said events such as this outbreak are not anticipated and hotels are having to deal with whether to refund the money or not. When one cancels a booking in normal times, hotels retain a certain percentage of the money that had been paid. Hotel owners are now wondering whether the same should apply.   

At African hotel in Kampala, the marketing team there told they “had been affected and we need prayers.”   

On the sidelines of the World Wealth Report at Sheraton hotel last Thursday, Jean Phillipe Bittencourt, the general manager, said cancellations have gone up.

Uganda was slated to host a couple of international conferences, including the G77 summit in April where the country would have brought in at least 4,000 people from 132 countries.

Africa Climate Week that was expected to take place in Kampala on April 24 has been postponed to an unknown date.  

Some visitors that had jetted in for the Uganda-Europe business forum were asked to go back to their respective countries after they refused 14-day quarantine.  

The tour operators have also faced the wrath of cancellations. Industry players say people that had paid for gorilla tracking tickets have asked for refunds.   

Joseph Halim, the managing director of Dream Balloons Uganda said they had sent their staff from Murchison Falls, where the company does most of the fieldwork, to Kampala until July because of a fall in bookings.  

Tourism and conferences are key to bringing in foreign exchange into the country.   With many of these cancelled or postponed, the Uganda shillings have come under pressure trading above Shs 3,710 against the dollar in the past few days.  

Stephen Kaboyo, the managing director of Alpha Capital Partners, said `the impact of the virus will be severe on currencies of smaller countries like Uganda.   

“Anxiety is setting in across all key sectors of the economy as global supply chains are disrupted,” he said. “A global shock of this nature, most times push markets towards safe-haven assets and this tends to weaken emerging markets currencies.”

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