动荡局势影响中东旅游业

And particularly in North Africa, what we are seeing is the bookings are really really down for places like Egypt. At least there are a few percentage points now what they used to be. Now fortunately this is not a very big part of hotels.com's bookings for us. But we are stopping sales in Libya and Bahrain.

Why is that?

Well, because we don't think it's safe for travelers to go there now. And in any event we can't even communicate with the hotels there because the local telecoms are down.

In both Bahrain and in Egypt?

Yes.

OK, in your experience, we have seen a revolution in Egypt. Mubarak has gone. Do you see a fairly sharp rebound at such a popular tourist destination once things settle down or are people wary for some time to come?

I think it will depend on the actions of the Egyptian government -- whatever form it takes, actually take. So if they communicate confidently, if they start messaging into the market that look it's now safe to travel Sharm el-Sheikh, and the Nile, and they are all protected, they are safe, then you could see bookings respond very very quickly. But if the situation takes some time to calm down, if there is any eruption of violence there, then I'm afraid travelers will travel elsewhere.

OK. What does this do or how does this impact your expectations for travel in 2011?

Well, I...I...at the moment since those places are not very very large inbound destinations, with the exception of Egypt, and I don't think it's going to knock 2011 world travel of course.

And is 2011 going to be a strong year?

It's looking like it's going to be a stronger year already. There is a sense of recovery in the global economy. I think it should be a stronger year, yes.

Do you have concerns, though, about oil prices' knock-on effects to air tickets?

Yes, I do. And not only that, but I would go farther than that and say, look, I think that oil prices will affect air prices; air prices' rising will negatively affect hotel prices because effectively a couple of things will happen. So first of all, as oil prices go up, the number of people travelling by air would go down because the prices will go up. OK, as prices go up, then the travelers' budget, whatever that may be, a larger bite will be taken out of that by air and that leaves a smaller bite left over for hotels and accommodations.

So how worried are you that this is actually going to happen this year because we are seeing oil relentlessly, the NYMEX oil relentlessly head towards 100 dollars again.

Yeah, I think reasonably concerned at this point, but we think that a lot of it has been driven by this very very current event. If that calms down, particularly in oil-producing countries like Libya, if that gets sorted fairly quickly, we could see the pressure on oil prices and in particular that stockpiling that's happening now go down.