Sosyal Medya

Economy

COVID-19 and the Global Tourism Industry: What are the Possible Future Recovery Scenarios?

The COVID-19 pandemic today is not just a health issue it affects all levels of society causing huge consequences for economic, social, food and political security.
20-11-2020 20:33
Mohammed Alnour* 
 
Coronavirus also is known as COVID-19, since its outbreak in China by the end of 2019 in Wuhan city where the first infection case was reported the pandemic spreads rapidly across the world. Over 44,888,869 from more than 218 countries around the world affected excluding 1,178,475 cases of deaths (WHO). According to WHO, coronavirus is a family of viruses that cause the illness ranging from the common cold to severe diseases such as SARS and MERS which originally came out from animals to people. In history, the name of coronavirus comes from the Latin word corona implies crown of a halo.
 
The novel coronavirus, identified by Chinese authorities on January 7, 2020. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization based on the assessment made declared that coronavirus can be characterized as pandemic disease. Little information is known about it but its transmission from human to human has been approved. The COVID-19 pandemic today is not just a health issue it affects all levels of society causing huge consequences for economic, social, food and political security.
 
Although there were many outbreaks that the world had experienced such as SARS, MERS and HIV/AIDS but none of these outbreaks has realized the round size of the COVID-19. The impact of the pandemic on the global economy started to increase rapidly. The stock markets indices were sharply declined in the lowest state ever in their history. The pandemic also affected global markets, assets values. The worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 has brought the world to a standstill, and tourism has been the worst affected of all major economic sectors.
 
International, regional and local travel restrictions immediately affected national economies, including tourism systems, i.e. international travel, domestic tourism, day visits and segments as diverse as air transport, cruises, public transport, accommodation, cafes and restaurants, conventions, festivals, meetings, or sports events. With international air travel rapidly slowing as a result of the crisis, and many countries imposing travel bans, closing borders, or introducing quarantine periods, international and domestic tourism declined precipitously over a period of weeks. As a result, international tourism numbers can fall by 60-80% by the end of this year (2020) as reported by UNWTO. This places millions of livelihoods at risk and threatens to roll back progress made in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
 
International Tourism 2020 Scenarios:as outlined by the UNWTO, current scenarios point to possible declines in arrivals of 58% to 78% for the year. These depend on the speed of containment and the duration of travel restrictions and the shutdown of borders. As shown in figure1 below, the following scenarios for 2020 are based on three possible dates for the gradual opening up of international borders.
 
Scenario 1 (-58%) based on the gradual opening of international borders and easing of travel restrictions in early July.
Scenario 2 (-70%) based on the gradual opening of international borders and easing of travel restrictions in early September.
Scenario 3 (-78%) based on the gradual opening of international borders and easing of travel restrictions only in early December.
 
Figure 1. International tourist arrivals in 2020: three scenarios
 
 
Source: United Nation World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
 
The scenarios presented in figure 1 are not forecasts. They represent an alternative monthly change in arrivals based on the gradual opening of national borders and lifting of travel restrictions on different dates, still subject to high uncertainty.
 
 Under these scenarios, the impact of the loss of demand in international travel could translate into: first, Loss of 850 million to 1.1 billion international tourists. Second, Loss of US$910 billion to US$1.2 trillion in export revenues from tourism. Third, 100 to 120 million direct tourism jobs at risk.This is by far the worst crisis that international tourism has faced since records began (1950).
 
Figure 2. When do you expect international demand for your destination will start to recover?
 
 
Source: United Nation World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
 
Domestic demand is expected to recover faster than international demand.As illustrated in figure 2, the estimates regarding the recovery of international travel are more positive in Africa and the Middle East with most experts foreseeing recovery still in 2020. Experts in the Americas are the least optimistic and least likely to believe in recovery in 2020, while in Europe and Asia the outlook is mixed, with half of the experts expecting to see recovery within this year.
 
Figure 3. When do you expect tourism demand in your destination will start to recover?
 
 
 
Source: United Nation World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)
 
Based on the UNWTO Panel of Experts surveydomestic demand is expected to recover faster than international demand. As presented in figure 3, the majority expects to see signs of recovery by the final quarter of 2020 but mostly in 2021.
 
To sum up:  as the general secretary of UNWTO said:  “The world is facing an unprecedented health and economic crisis, tourism has been hit hard with millions of jobs at risk in one of the most labour-intensive sectors of the economy”. This article has shed the light on the effect of covid-19 on the tourism sector. As the negative impact of the covid-19 on tourism sector will cause further social problems, robust economic policies precisely expansionary fiscal policies (increasing the government expenditure and aids, low taxes to the micro-enterprises and small companies in general and tourism sector specifically)   should be strictly implemented and closely monitored. As COVID-19 is not yet over empirical research are needed to investigate its impact on the global economy especially on tourism.   
 

 
*mohamedmershing88@gmail.com  

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1 Yorum

  1. Abdelaziz Abdalla. B

    November 22, 2020 Sun 20:05

    It is a valuable essay, I have read it end to end, thank you for feeding us with such great vocabulary, we are looking to read more about your essays.Keep driving a log Road needs to be a crossed.

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