COVID-19 AND TOURISM Charlotte Hill

THE EFFECT OF COVID-19 ON TOURISM

The effects of the Covid-19 disease on the global tourism industry have been colossal. This is because tourism is one of the greatest sectors in the world's economy, as it accounts for 10% of the Global GDP and more than 320 million jobs worldwide, as well as this in 2019 over 1.9 billion people travelled abroad. The huge effects occurred due to government-implement lockdowns disrupting life for billions of people, and restricting travel from a local level to a global level, resulting in an economic collapse scenario. The pandemic has resulted in a rapid increase in unemployment levels worldwide, for example in March 2021 UK unemployment rates were up to 4.8%. As well as this, the Bank of England estimates unemployment rates will increase by 5.5% in the Autumn, as this is when the furlough scheme is due to end. Supply and demand curves suggest the pandemic creates panic amongst the public that contributes to a lower demand in the travel industry. There have been two main effects on tourism, there has been a decrease in global travel due to international restrictions, but an increase in domestic travel and tourism. 

The effect of the pandemic on global tourism is huge, especially in countries that heavily rely on the income from tourism, for example Caribbean islands. For example, Barbados has gone into crisis due to the crash in tourism and the IMF has been forced to augment about $90 million or 2% of its GDP. All over the world, tourism-dependent economies are working to afford several measures to soften the impact of plummeting tourism revenues on businesses. Cash transfers, grants, tax relief, payroll support, and loan guarantees have been distributed by banks and the government. Banks have also halted loan repayments in some cases. Some countries have focused support on informal workers, who tend to be concentrated in the tourism sector and are highly vulnerable. Overall, this has heavily reduced countries GDP’s, employment rates and overall health leading to a crash in the global economy by over $4 trillion due to the Covid-19 impact on tourism.

The effect of the pandemic on tourism within the UK has been negative in terms of people entering the UK from abroad, in 2020 the UK received 11.1 million inbound visits, which is a 73% decline from visits in 2019. This affected the UK negatively as visitor spending was down by 78% which equates to a £17.9 billion loss. This has led to thousands of people losing their jobs, especially people in the tourism sector, for example over 10,000 pubs shut in the UK. On the other hand, there has been an increase in domestic tourism within the UK, this is because it is very hard, or even impossible to travel abroad so the population are resorting to taking stay-cations. A statistic to show this is that it has been reported Google UK searches for "staycation" increased by over 500 percent in July 2020 compared to the previous summer, and as a result of this staycation bookings have been seen to surge by 300% compared to 2019.