英譯漢

For all the natural and man-made disasters of the past year, travelers seem more determined than ever to leave home.

Never mind the tsunami devastation in Asia last December, the recent earthquake in Kashmir or the suicide bombings this year in London and Bali, among other places on or off the tourist trail. The number of leisure travelers visiting tourist destinations hit by trouble has in some cases bounced back to a level higher than before disaster struck.

"This new fast recovery of tourism we are observing is kind of strange," said John Koldowski, director for the Strategic Intelligence Center of the Bangkok-based Pacific Asia Travel Association. "It makes you think about the adage that any publicity is good publicity." It is still too soon to compile year-on-year statistics for the disasters of the past 12 months,but travel industry experts say that the broad trends are already clear. Leisure travel isexpected to increase by nearly 5 percent this year, according to the World Tourism and Travel Council.

Tourism and travel now seem to bounce back faster and higher each time there is an event of this sort," said Ufi Ibrahim, vice president of the London-based World Tourism and Travel Council. For London, where suicide bombers killed 56 and wounded 700 on July 8, she said, "It was almost as if people who stayed away after the bomb attack then decided to come back twice." Early indicators show that the same holds true for other disaster-struck destinations. Statistics compiled by the Pacific Asia Travel Association, for example, show that monthly visitor arrivals in Sri Lanka, where the Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami left more than 30,000 people dead or missing, were higher than one year earlier for every month from March through August of this year.

A case commonly cited by travel professionals as an early example of the trend is Bali,where 202 people were killed in bombings targeting Western tourists in October 2002. Visitor arrivals plunged to 993,000 for the year after the bombing, but bounced back to 1.46 million in 2004, a level higher than the two years before the bomb, according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association.

Even among Australians, who suffered the worst casualties in the Bali bombings, the number of Bali-bound visitors bounced back within two years to the highest level since 1998,

according the Pacific Asia Travel Association. Bali was hit again this year by suicide bombers who killed 19 people in explosions at three restaurants. Visits are also on the upswing to post-tsunami Thailand, where the giant waves killed 5,400 and left more than 5,000 missing. Although the tsunami killed more than 500 Swedes on the Thai resort island of Phuket, thelargest number of any foreign nationality to die, Swedes are returning to the island in largernumbers than last year, according to My Travel Sweden, a Stockholm-based group that sends600,000 tourists overseas annually and claims a 28 percent market share for Sweden. "We were confident that Thailand would eventually bounce back as a destination, but we didn"t think that this year it would come back even stronger than last year," said Joakim Eriksson, director of communication for My Travel Sweden. "We were very surprised because we really expected a significant decline." Eriksson said My Travel now expects a 5 percent increase in visitors to both Thailand andSri Lanka this season compared with the same season last year. This behavior is a sharp changefrom the patterns of the 1990s, Eriksson said.

"During the first Gulf war we saw a sharp drop in travel as a whole, and the same after Sept. 11," Eriksson said. "Now the main impact of terrorism or disasters is a change in destination."

參考譯文

盡管過去的一年天災人禍不斷，但這絲毫沒有影響人們出游的興致，出游意愿空前高漲。去年12月亞洲發生了特大海嘯，近期克什米爾發生了地震，倫敦和巴厘島也相繼發生了自殺性爆炸事件，包括熱門旅游目的地在內的許多地區都遭受了類似天災人禍的影響。盡管如此，一些旅游勝地災后旅游業復蘇強勁，游客數量甚至超過了災前水平。“現在旅游業復蘇勢頭迅猛，著實令人費解，”總部設在曼谷的太平洋亞洲旅游協會戰略情報中心主任約翰﹒考爾多斯基說道，“這不由讓人想起那句格言，

„好事壞事無所謂，為人所知最可貴‟”。(好也好，壞也好，只要出名就好。)鑒于去年發生災禍較多，現在對旅游業做同比統計為時尚早，不過旅游業老師表示，旅游業總體發展趨勢已十分明朗。世界旅游旅行理事會預計，今年旅游人數料將同比上升近5%。總部設在倫敦的世界旅游旅行理事會副理事長尤菲﹒易卜拉欣說，“現在每當發生天災人禍后，旅游業復蘇步伐似乎都在加快，且發展勢頭更猛。”去年7月8日倫敦發生了自殺性爆炸事件，導致56人喪生，700人受傷。談及倫敦的旅游業發展，尤菲﹒易卜拉欣說，“現在旅游人數幾乎翻番，感覺就像是爆炸襲擊后那些刻意避開倫敦的游客現在改變了主意，(為彌補缺憾，)非要二度暢游倫敦一樣。”初步統計顯示，其他受災旅游目的地的旅游業發展態勢也大致如此。斯里蘭卡在2004年12月26日發生的特大海嘯中有超過3萬人喪生或失蹤。

太平洋亞洲旅游協會提供的統計數字顯示，斯里蘭卡今年三至八月份的入境游客數量每月都呈現出同比增長的良好態勢。2002年10月印尼巴厘島發生了針對西方游客的蓄意爆炸事件，造成202人喪生。但是，當地旅游業此后快速復蘇，成為旅游業界人士早期廣泛引用的經典案例。太平洋亞洲旅游協會統計數據顯示，在爆炸發生的當年，巴厘島的游客數量驟降至99.3萬人，但是到2004年又反彈至146萬人，超過了爆炸發生前兩年的游客接待量。澳大利亞游客在當年巴厘島爆炸事件中傷亡最為慘重。

但是，太平洋亞洲旅游協會的統計數據顯示，在爆炸發生后的兩年時間里前往巴厘島度假的澳大利亞游客數量達到了1998年以來的最高水平。今年巴厘島再遭自殺性爆炸襲擊，三個餐館發生連環爆炸，共造成19人喪生。2004年的特大海嘯在泰國共造成5400人喪生，超過5000人失蹤，而現在赴泰國的游客數量也在不斷上升。當年海嘯發生期間，在泰國旅游度假勝地普吉島有超過500名瑞典游客喪生，是外籍游客當中死亡人數最多的。不過，根據“瑞典-我的旅行”的統計，今年重返普吉島度假的瑞典游客數量已超過去年。“瑞典-我的旅行”是一家位于斯德哥爾摩的國際旅行社，每年向國外輸送60萬名游客，在瑞典旅游市場占據28%的份額。“當時我們相信泰國最終會再次成為瑞典游客心目中的熱點旅游目的地，但是沒想到會這么快。今年赴泰瑞典游客人數甚至超過了去年，”

該旅行社對外聯絡部主任約吉姆﹒埃里克森說，“我們原以為赴泰游會出現大幅下滑，所以這么強勁的復蘇勢頭確實出乎意料。”埃里克森說，該旅行社預計，今年旅游季赴泰國和斯里蘭卡旅游的瑞典游客數量將同比增長5%。他說，這種旅游發展趨勢與上世紀90年代迥然不同。“在第一次海灣戰爭期間，整個旅游市場游客數量出現大幅下滑，„911‟恐怖襲擊后也是如此，”埃里克森說道，“而現在，恐怖主義襲擊或者自然災害對旅游業的影響主要體現在游客旅游目的地的調整(，游客數量不會再大幅下降)。”