Even before atypical pneumonia reared its deadly head, the travel industry and the publications that have sprouted around it have been nursing serious body blows after two devastating terrorist attacks.
The terror attacks on the United States in 2001 and the Bali bombing last year came as a one-two punch which served to dampen the wanderlust albeit for a far shorter time in Asia than in the US.
Even as 9/11 and Bali drove home the realisation that the world had become a far more dangerous place to live and move around in, they were one-off events that saw a semblance of normalcy returning after the initial shock.
But the atypical pneumonia outbreak is proving a more intractable crisis.
The likelihood that the health crisis could play itself out over weeks, possibly months, with a stickiness that is impossible to shake off makes it all the more difficult to revive the travel bug.
WHO advisories warning against travel to the Asian epicenters of this health crisis are likely to deter all but the most intrepid of travellers.
And as airlines, hotels and tour operators tally up losses stemming from multiple cancellations, the knock-on effect has become evident on travel titles.
Some publications like Discovery, Cathay Pacific's inflight magazine, and CEI Asia Pacific have temporarily switched from a monthly to bimonthly publishing schedule.
The impact on advertising revenue varies between a 10 per cent fall year-on-year for Frequent Traveller and Action Asia, while CEI and Business Traveller Asia-Pacific are reporting that revenue for the second quarter could be down as much as 40 per cent. Business Traveller Publisher Peggy Teo says ads have simply been postponed not cancelled, which is the same for CEI. Still, the postponement has resulted in a trimming back of pages, and with the growing severity of the SARS outbreak in China, its Business Traveller China edition has been suspended until the situation improves.
A major part of the problem, Teo notes is WHO advisories warning people not to travel to SARS hotspots, including Hong Kong and Beijing.
A recent survey conducted by Business Traveller found that some 80 per cent of its readers had stopped travelling, but the majority would be back in airplanes and hotels once the advisory is lifted.
"The business travelling segment must bounce back because there is a need for face-to-face communication among business people. Emails or videoconferencing will never replace that. The rebound will be strong, but not for the leisure segment where recovery can take a long time," she says.
CEI Asia-Pacific managing director, Tim Waldron, believes that if the SARS situation can be brought under control, it could trigger a recovery.
"Travel and tourism plays such a major part in Asian economies that governments may be forced to not only increase marketing budgets to boost people's confidence in travelling again, but to also assist the airline and hotel industries to remain viable as a key national employer and revenue generator," Waldron said.
Postponements have also occurred at newly-relaunched Holiday Asia. Its MD, Gretchen Worth, says the main change is that advertising for the moment "is a lot less image, more tactical and geared to get quick action from consumers."
China has always been a bright spot in the world economy, however, its mishandling of the outbreak has raised a huge outcry. Nevertheless, CAAC Inflight Magazine publisher, Christophe d'Orey says "The Government recently sacked two senior officials, including the mayor of Beijing, so it is now taking this issue very seriously and we should see improvements to the situation soon."
The new slump follows indications that regional advertising in these magazines rose in the first two months of this year, according to Nielsen Media Research - up four per cent to US$6.8 million for inflight titles, while the figure was higher - by more than 20 per cent to $749 million - for trade and conference publications.
Travel magazines, however, shed 48 per cent of their revenue to $343 million as airlines and hotels began to cut back on marketing activities ahead of the much-anticipated war in Iraq.
The Nielsen figures also showed that travel advertising within these titles fell 17 per cent, while most other categories such as real estate, personal items, liquor and automobiles moved into higher territory.
Despite the doom and gloom, there is widespread optimism that the market must return. According to McCann-Erickson's latest Pulse research, it will come down to what's going to be considered normal.
McCann regional director of consumer learning, Dave McCaughan, says: "Right now, 79 per cent of respondents have said they would not travel to Hong Kong, Singapore and China and that's not normal. The best-case scenario right now is that Sars will be contained but not eradicated so what will happen is that we will move to a new normalcy, where they are travelling again but with caution and where the wearing of surgical masks will not appear strange."
Hints of a return to some form of normalcy can be seen in forward advertising bookings.
CEI's Waldron says: "Interestingly, we are still seeing some forward bookings. We've even seen new business coming in from outside the region."
Action Asia publisher Olivier Burlot adds: "We have also noticed advertising campaigns from tourism boards - Malaysia and Thailand - postponed to July and August."
For the time being, however, these magazines will continue publishing but from a reduced cost base - with fewer pages, less frequency, and, possibly, fewer people.
Additional reporting by Sangeeta Mulchand.