Luang Prabang during the pandemic

This is a slice of a very striking story that I wrote on the situation in the historic city of Lung Prabang during the pandemic - from early 2021. Since then there has been some noticeable spikes in infections, and Laos is still closed, but is well on track with it’s vaccination schedule.

There’s an eerie and yet peaceful atmosphere on the streets of Luang Prabang right now. It’s a strange but tense kind of tranquillity that has not been seen in this increasingly popular tourist destination for decades.

This is typically high tourism season for the tiny city that has held UNESCO World Heritage Site status since 1995, although in recent years it has been steadily busy year-round and boasts ever-increasing international tourism numbers.

Laos is a wild and wonderful place that is landlocked and festooned in the jungles and mountains of old Indochina, and Luang Prabang is surely its crowning jewel. The city remains a highly spiritual place and is famed for its numerous Buddhist temples and morning alms ceremony, where long processions of orange robed monks walk the early morning streets. It’s a sight that pulls in tourists from the world over to this remote place.

The monks do still walk out at sunrise to collect alms, but now the crowds of selfie snapping tourist are now all gone. This is perhaps a blessing in some ways, but is a disaster for local tourism. Luang Prabang has an estimated 97 hotels and resorts around 400 guesthouses, most of which are now shuttered, some probably forever.

One of the few hotels that has stayed open is the Sanctuary, as French acting general manager and COO of the Sanctuary group (3 hotels in Laos) Henri Pierre Leveillard, who has been living in Luang Prabang for 13 years tells us; “Here in Laos we had one month of lockdown from 20th March – 20th April. In May we couldn’t really open, but we did a little bit, although we didn’t welcome anybody because they couldn’t travel between provinces.”

Provincial borders opened a month later; “In June they started to open regionally, but the international borders are still closed. Unless you’re on a WFP (World Food Program) flight you cannot come to Laos.”

In 2019 Luang Prabang received an estimated 860,000 visitors, a number that has been increasing year on year but fell to around 247,000 last year, with almost half of them being domestic tourists, the foreign tourist came before March; “Luang Prabang is dead, completely dead. I would say that around 80% of the businesses have closed.” The Sanctuary is one of around 17 hotels still open; “Here we remain open with around 70% of our employees, the rest have been sent home – and it’s the same at Maolin Tavern (a popular bar that he co-owns). Now I have 3 employees, where as before I had 10, and we only open in the evenings.”

As Laos is effectively closed turning attention to the domestic market is the only survival option for tourism right now; “There are no foreigners so the market went from westerners to us focussing only on the Laos market. In one way it’s good; we’re making the best out of what we can have locally, which means that in the future we will remember how to attract the local market.”

Vientiane, the countries capital, is a short flight or a long drive away, and is the main target when attracting local tourists; “We do a lot of promotion on social media. Everything is in the Laos language, and we target that market – from Vientiane, Savannakhet and Pakse, because all these people can not travel out of Laos now.”

Most business owners expect this situation to continue for some time; ”I know it’s going to be like this for another year. If by March 2022 it’s the same then I will have no choice but to close all of my business and take my family back to Europe.” Concludes Henri.

The closing of international borders seems to have shielded the population somewhat from the virus with just 41 officially confirmed cases in total, although how to survive economically is another matter, especially for Laos nationals such as Somnuek Souliphone, the former office manager Green Discovery Laos in Luang Prabang; “There was no job in Luang Prabang any more, no foreign tourists (so the office closed) and so I had to leave. I’m now in Boten, near to the Chinese border. I’ve been running my own restaurant for here 6 months now, as there are still customers thanks to the construction of the new train station (to China).”