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Tourism
This year may prove even worse for the tourism industry than 2020
Hopes of a recovery in 2021 have faded
IF THE TOURISM industry were represented by a traveller, he would be sitting in an airport lounge staring at a departure board showing nothing but “Delayed” and “Cancelled”. At the beginning of this year, a world once more full of tourists and business travellers became a tantalising prospect. Today, even as Delta continues to wreak havoc in Europe and America, the discovery of Omicron has prompted yet more travel bans, dampening the mood further.
The gloom was confirmed in the latest World Tourism Barometer by the World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), a UN agency, released on November 28th, before the full effects of Omicron could be gauged. The UNWTO expects international tourist arrivals in 2021 to be 70-75% below where they were in 2019. That would be no different from last year. Receipts from tourism, meanwhile, are forecast to reach $700bn-800bn, a small improvement from 2020 but puny compared with the US$1.7trn recorded in 2019.
Source: World Tourism Organisation