The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is challenging the world. With no vaccine and limited medical capacity to treat the disease,
nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI) are the main strategy to contain the pandemic. Unprecedented global travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders are causing the most severe disruption of the global economy. With international travel bans affecting over 90% of the world population and wide-spread restrictions on public gatherings and community mobility, tourism largely ceased in March 2020. Early evidence on impacts on air travel, cruises, and accommodations have been devastating. While Tourism is especially susceptible to measures to counteract pandemics because of restricted mobility and social distancing.
The main reasons for the increasing pandemic threat in the 21st century are: a rapidly growing and mobile world population, urbanization trends and the concentration of people; industrialized food production in global value chains ; increased consumption of higher-order foods including meat; and, the development of global transport networks acting as vectors in the spread of pathogens .
As a result of global change, the rate at which major epidemics and pandemics occur has been increasing. It is generally recognized that the twentieth century experienced three pandemics.
At the time of writing, the number of COVID-19 infections worldwide exceeded 1.2 million and deaths has surpassed 69,000,unemployment figures have risen steeply in many countries.
As the world faces its biggest pandemic in a century, almost all the sectors of the economy are hit and will take a long time to recover. The tourism sector lookout will really depend on how rapid this virus spreads, or how it is contained. If the virus starts subsiding in the third and fourth quarter this year, we can predict that the tourism sector will recover partially in 2021, but will take a long time to recover completely.
The tourism sector is driven by the psychology of people and is very sensitive to safety and security aspects. Companies have to regain the trust of people in the recovery period to travel again after the pandemic and thus it would be a challenging task. Unlike other business sectors, tourism will take a longer time to return to normalcy in the recovery period because tourists need to ensure that the situation is really safe and secure before they step out to travel again. To assist the tourism sector recover quickly after the pandemic, several actions must be carried out such as disinfecting major tourist destinations, including hotels, in order to regain people’s trust that tourist destinations and accommodations are all safe from Covid-19.
Written By :
Ms.Lavisha Raheja