Tourism in COVID-19 Pandemic: Consequences and the Way Forward
Tourism in COVID-19 Pandemic: Consequences and the Way Forward

Summary/Abstract: COVID-19 pandemic emerged as a shock to the world, leading it towards an unprecedented socioeconomic crisis. Amongst all the sectors of the global economy, tourism was hit the hardest. Non-pharmaceutical interventions put in place to curb the spread of the disease, deeply impacted the activities in the global tourism community. Owing to the pandemic, the global community is being pushed into a recession. Tourism is crucial to the economic recovery of the world. Therefore, this study focuses on examining the consequences of the pandemic on the global tourism sector. Since tourism does not work in isolation and is intertwined with its associated sectors, the study considers the impact of the pandemic on aviation, hotel and accommodation and MSMEs in tourism. For this purpose, a regional analysis has been conducted. The findings reveal that the Asia-Pacific region has been consistently performing poorly in terms of tourism-related indicators. Europe stood second in place. However, during the resurgence of the second wave and new variants of the virus, it kept on switching places with the Asia-Pacific region. Tourism is considered to be a resilient sector as it bounces back to the pre-crisis levels eventually. However, the evolving nature of the pandemic has created huge difficulties for the sector to start its recovery. Hence the paper also discusses the future of travel in the next normal.

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