Travelers are now taking shorter trips closer to home, putting domestic tourism up.
Because the long lockdowns have opened the urge to splurge, more money are being spent per trip. That could also be due to longer stays and higher prices.
That’s the good news from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) which sees recovery as destination specific.
Southern and Mediterranean Europe and North and Central America all saw international tourism through September increase over last year. The Caribbean recorded a 55 -percent jump in arrivals.
Asia and the Pacific saw 95 percent fewer international tourists compared to 2019 pre-pandemic, the UNWTO said in a report.
Tourism represents a major source of export revenues for many countries, and an important part of their gross domestic product (GDP). It supports millions of jobs particularly for women and young people.
Tourism direct GDP amounted to $3.5 trillion in 2019, or 4 percent of world GDP.
In the decades leading up to 2019, tourism saw continued expansion and diversification to become one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world.
Growth was driven by a relatively strong global economy, expanding middle classes, increased market openness and rapid urbanization in emerging economies, as well as affordable air travel and visa facilitation.
Technological advances and new business models, particularly through internet and mobile devices also contributed to this expansion in travel.
In 2019, international tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) reached 1.5 billion worldwide, following a decade of uninterrupted growth. Arrivals increased an average 5 percent per year between 2009 and 2019, or as much as 63 percent on aggregate.
Tourism also became one of the world’s major trade categories, with export revenues from tourism reaching $1.7 trillion in 2019, equivalent to 28 percent of the world’s trade in services and 7 percent of overall exports of goods and services.
The pandemic cut tourism direct GDP by more than half in 2020, reducing it by $2 trillion, to 1.8 percent of world GDP. The plunge represents about 70 percent of the overall decline in world GDP in 2020.
International tourist arrivals dropped by 73 percent in 2020, while export revenues from tourism (international tourism receipts and passenger transport) declined by 63 percent in real terms.
The loss in export revenues from international tourism is estimated at $1.1 trillion and represents 42 percent of the total loss in international trade in 2020. In 2020-2021, the COVID-19 pandemic caused an unprecedented disruption, resulting in a massive drop in international travel following a global lockdown and plunge in demand amid widespread travel restrictions put in place to contain the spread of the pandemic.
Tourism was the most affected, with businesses, employment and livelihoods severely impacted.
The WTO report estimates the direct contribution of tourism to GDP before and after the pandemic. It quantifies the economic impact of the pandemic in terms of Tourism Direct Gross Domestic Product (TDGDP) and export revenues from tourism.
It sees a bleak postcard: tourism’s contribution to the world economy this year will be $1.9 trillion — a slight improvement over last year’s $1.6 trillion but still far lower than the $3.5 trillion the industry earned in 2019.
The reasons: the continuing pandemic, and the emergence of the highly transmissible omicron variant.
Global lockdowns and severe travel restrictions caused international tourism to nosedive by 73 percent in 2020 or one billion fewer people traveling abroad than the year before.
Through September of this year, there were still 76 percent fewer international tourists than in 2019, and the WTO forecasts that the global tourism economy will end the year about 70 percent to 75 percent below 2019 levels.
The contribution of tourism to the world economy amounted to $3.5 trillion in 2019, or 4 percent of world GDP, measured in TDGDP.
The report forecasts that TDGDP will edge up to 2 percent of world GDP in 2021, following a rebound in domestic tourism and higher spending on both domestic and international travel.
