Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic highly affected many sectors of the world. The tourism industry was among the highly affected sectors because it involves the movement of people from one place to another to satisfy their interests or people spending time away from home to relax. Tourism can be grouped into categories, such as leisure tourism, which involves traveling to visit some places for pleasure or recreation. Business tourism travels purposely to do business in the area of visit. Adventure and cultural tourist travel to explore. The outbreak of COVID-19 affected the tourism industry because the pandemic came up with restrictions that highly affected people interested in traveling. This paper aims to discuss the impacts of this COVID-19 outbreak on the tourism industry and how it is negatively affected.
Travel Restriction
The worldwide tourism trend has been increasing speedily since 1980. Hence, the world then faces some challenges that hide tourism activities; for example, pandemics, terrorism, social and economic conditions, and world conflicts highly affect the demand for tourism (Marinko, 2). The COVID-19 pandemic highly affected the tourism industry in terms of the number of tourists in the world drop since most countries come up with new restrictions to curb the spread of the contentious disease. Some countries in the world totally closed their borders, hence no tourists; others initiated lockdown and quarantine measures to make sure that if tourists visit the country during the pandemic season, they follow the given measures. Through this traveling limitation, the number of tourists decreased, affecting the tourism industry significantly. The pandemic has swept the world because it is an airborne transmitted disease; hence, no one would risk traveling to the mentioned areas. All the countries and states have come up with restriction measures, such as closing borders to combat the transmission of the virus (Jaffar,7).
Economic Crisis
Economic decline refers to the downturn of economic activity across the nation in a given period due to social, economic, or political outbreaks. The economic crises are noticed where we have high unemployment rates, contraction of Gross Domestic Production (GDP), low profits in business, and joblessness. Big nations such as Brazil and the United States of America were highly affected by COVID-19 because they recorded high numbers of infections; hence, most of their economic activities were affected (Shohini,2). Covid-19 affected the aviation industry. During the pandemic, the industry experienced a low traveling rate and cancellations of flights by passengers due to restrictions and lockdowns. Airport Council International (ACI) printed out the data of the travelers before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that during the pandemic, the number of travelers came down to 4.6 billion by the end of 2020 (Shohini,3). The cancellation of domestic and international flights caused this. Oil Industries were also affected economically because of less movement of people. The oil-dependent countries were highly affected. The price fell, and the demand decreased (Shohini,7). The tourism industry was also affected because hotels were empty (Shohini,9). The number of travelers was reduced, so the investors in that sector faced many losses due to the low number of visitors. Most events were canceled, and other meetings were postponed, hence the economic crisis.
Cancellation of Events
Covid-19 led to the postponement of major and minor events worldwide. Most of the meetings had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 restrictions, such as lockdowns, which were imposed nearly everywhere in the world. Border closure also leads to cancellation of events because if the event were to take place in an affected area, it had to be canceled. Quarantine affected them more because the tourists were not ready to travel to be quarantined in a foreign land. Statistics show that the motels and hotels experienced high losses because many overseas bookings were canceled. The New Nation (2020) report projected that 80% of the bookings in various places worldwide were canceled (Santus,5). Flights were also canceled due to the pandemic. The research by IATA shows that more than two million flights were canceled by the end of June 2020 (Santus, 6). The airline was affected by the international bans.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 pandemic has more negative effects, as discussed above. Covid-19 impacted the tourism industry by reducing the number of travelers due to lockdowns and border closures worldwide. The quarantine measures were too affected. COVID-19 also leads to joblessness and economic downfall due to the limited number of travelers and interactions. Most events were canceled, and others were postponed. A large number of tourists also reduced the number of tourists. The world had to come up with new measures to curb the pandemic. Tourists had to find other alternative ways of exploring. In conclusion, the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on tourism were discussed and elaborated.
Reference
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