By DAVID KOENIG and YURI KAGEYA­MA-As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Tourism busi­ness­es that were just find­ing their foot­ing af­ter near­ly two years of dev­as­ta­tion wrought by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic are be­ing rat­tled again as coun­tries throw up new bar­ri­ers to trav­el in an ef­fort to con­tain the omi­cron vari­ant.

From shop­ping dis­tricts in Japan and tour guides in the Holy Land to ski re­sorts in the Alps and air­lines the world over, a fa­mil­iar dread is ris­ing about the re­newed re­stric­tions.

Mean­while, trav­el­ers ea­ger to get out there have been thrown back in­to the old rou­tine of read­ing up on new re­quire­ments and post­pon­ing trips.

Ab­by Moore, a li­brar­i­an and as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na, Char­lotte, was sched­uled to leave for Prague on Wednes­day. But the day be­fore her flight, she start­ed hav­ing doubts when she saw that Prague had closed its Christ­mas mar­kets and im­posed a city-wide cur­few.

“I wasn’t re­al­ly con­cerned about my trip un­til the Czech Re­pub­lic start­ed what looked like a mi­ni-lock­down process,” said Moore, who de­cid­ed to resched­ule her trav­el to March.

Less than a month af­ter sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­ing re­stric­tions for in­bound in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el, the U.S. gov­ern­ment has banned most for­eign na­tion­als who have re­cent­ly been in any of eight south­ern African coun­tries. A sim­i­lar boomerang was seen in Japan and Is­rael, both of which tight­ened re­stric­tions short­ly af­ter re­lax­ing them.

While it is not clear where the vari­ant emerged, South African sci­en­tists iden­ti­fied it last week, and many places have re­strict­ed trav­el from the wider re­gion, in­clud­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union and Cana­da.

For all the alarm, lit­tle is known about omi­cron, in­clud­ing whether it is more con­ta­gious, caus­es more se­ri­ous ill­ness or can evade vac­cines.

Still, gov­ern­ments that were slow to re­act to the first wave of COVID-19 are ea­ger to avoid past mis­takes. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion says, how­ev­er, that trav­el bans are of lim­it­ed val­ue and will “place a heavy bur­den on lives and liveli­hoods.” Oth­er ex­perts say trav­el re­stric­tions won’t keep vari­ants out but might give coun­tries more time to get peo­ple vac­ci­nat­ed.

Lon­don-based air­line easy­Jet said Tues­day that re­newed trav­el re­stric­tions al­ready ap­pear to be hurt­ing win­ter book­ings, al­though CEO Jo­han Lund­gren said the dam­age is not yet as se­vere as dur­ing pre­vi­ous waves. The CEO of SAS Scan­di­na­vian Air­lines said win­ter de­mand was look­ing up, but now we “need to fig­ure out what the new vari­ants may mean.”

“In the past year, each new vari­ant has brought a de­cline in book­ings, but then an in­crease once the surge dis­si­pates,” said Helane Beck­er, an an­a­lyst with fi­nan­cial ser­vices firm Cowen. “We ex­pect the same pat­tern” this time.

Is­rael’s de­ci­sion to close the coun­try to for­eign vis­i­tors is hit­ting the na­tion’s tourism in­dus­try as it geared up for the Hanukkah and Christ­mas hol­i­days. The coun­try on­ly opened to tourists in No­vem­ber, af­ter bar­ring most for­eign vis­i­tors since ear­ly last year.

Just over 30,000 tourists en­tered Is­rael in the first half of No­vem­ber, com­pared to 421,000 in No­vem­ber 2019, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment fig­ures.

Joel Haber, a Jerusalem-based guide, said dur­ing a typ­i­cal Hanukkah hol­i­day his cal­en­dar would be chock full of food tours through Jerusalem’s col­or­ful Ma­hane Yehu­da mar­ket. In­stead, he has just one tour a day.

“Tour op­er­a­tors like me are the first to get hit and the last to emerge and are di­rect­ly pre­vent­ed from work­ing by a gov­ern­ment de­ci­sion,” Haber said.

In the West Bank city of Beth­le­hem, revered by Chris­tians as Je­sus’ birth­place, lo­cal busi­ness­es ex­pect­ed a boost from Christ­mas tourism. The Beth­le­hem Ho­tel, one of the largest in the city, has op­er­at­ed at a frac­tion of ca­pac­i­ty for the past 18 months.

“Every­one who had book­ings over the next two weeks has can­celed, while oth­ers are wait­ing to see what hap­pens next,” said the ho­tel’s man­ag­er, Michael Muf­di. “I don’t know how much longer we can last, but we are do­ing our best.”

The pan­dem­ic al­ready caused for­eign tourism in Japan to shrink from 32 mil­lion vis­i­tors in 2019 to 4 mil­lion last year, a trend that has con­tin­ued through this year.

As wor­ries sur­faced about omi­cron, Japan on Wednes­day tight­ened its ban on for­eign trav­el­ers, ask­ing air­lines to stop tak­ing new reser­va­tions for all flights ar­riv­ing in the coun­try un­til the end of De­cem­ber. Prime Min­is­ter Fu­mio Kishi­da has pushed for avoid­ing “the worst-case sce­nario” and re­versed a re­lax­ation of trav­el re­stric­tions that had been in ef­fect just three weeks.

The crowds of Chi­nese shop­pers who used to ar­rive in Tokyo’s glitzy Gin­za dis­trict in a stream of bus­es to snap up lux­u­ry items have long dis­ap­peared. Restau­rants and bars have been forced to re­strict hours.

In Asakusa, a quaint part of town filled with sou­venir shops, rick­shaw dri­vers, and stalls sell­ing tra­di­tion­al sweets, news of the omi­cron vari­ant made lit­tle dif­fer­ence this week. Ven­dors say there hasn’t been any busi­ness for months ex­cept for a few lo­cal cus­tomers.

Boat char­ter op­er­a­tor Tokyo Wa­ter Taxi start­ed on the city’s wa­ter­front in 2015, when hopes were high for cash­ing in on the boom­ing tourism trade. With the vari­ant push­ing the re­turn of for­eign vis­i­tors far in­to the fu­ture, the com­pa­ny is try­ing to look on the bright side.

“It’s grow­ing pop­u­lar with Tokyo res­i­dents, who have lost oth­er ways to en­ter­tain them­selves,” said com­pa­ny spokes­woman Yuha In­oue.

In Eu­rope, Alpine ski re­sorts wor­ry about how to keep up with re­quire­ments such as en­sur­ing all skiers are vac­ci­nat­ed or re­cov­ered from in­fec­tion and have test­ed neg­a­tive for the virus.

Matthias Stauch, head of the Ger­man ski lift op­er­a­tors as­so­ci­a­tion VDS, said many are small fam­i­ly busi­ness­es that lack the staff to per­form such checks. Mean­while, the as­so­ci­a­tion is warn­ing about “mas­sive” eco­nom­ic dam­age to the tourism sec­tor if there is an­oth­er lock­down.

Trav­el ex­ec­u­tives ar­gue that gov­ern­ment de­ci­sions about re­stric­tions should wait un­til more is known about omi­cron, but they ad­mit it’s a dif­fi­cult call.

“If you wait, by the time you have all the da­ta it’s prob­a­bly too late to stop com­mu­ni­ty spread be­cause (the virus) is al­ready here,” said Robert Jor­dan, the in­com­ing CEO at South­west Air­lines. “If you jump ahead, you run the risk of the mea­sures be­ing more im­pact­ful than the ac­tu­al cas­es.”

About a month ago, Javier Bar­ra­gan and his hus­band booked a vis­it to Paris for lat­er this month. When news of omi­cron hit, they were con­cerned but de­cid­ed to go ahead with the trip.

“The way that it was in the news, there’s a sense of ‘Oh, is this worse? Is this dif­fer­ent?’” said Bar­ra­gan, who lives in New York. France’s health pro­to­cols — the cou­ple will have to sub­mit vac­cine cards to en­ter the coun­try — made them feel more com­fort­able. Al­so, both got boost­er shots.

They did, how­ev­er, buy trav­el in­sur­ance that will cov­er can­cel­la­tion for most any rea­son.

Koenig re­port­ed from Dal­las and Kageya­ma from Tokyo. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mae An­der­son and Tali Ar­bel in New York; Dee-Ann Durbin in De­troit; Tia Gold­en­berg in Tel Aviv, Is­rael; Jack Jef­fery in Beth­le­hem, West Bank; Frank Jor­dans in Berlin; Pan Py­las in Lon­don; and Mogo­mot­si Magome in Jo­han­nes­burg con­tributed.