Unfortunately I am not a quantitative person, so my views on COVID’s impacts rely too much on secondary data, online industrial reports and official policies.
There is no doubt that the pandemic significantly hits the tourism industry from early 2020. The significant decline in the international tourism market is one of immediate and immense consequences. According to OECD’s report, this pandemic crisis also destroys the entire tourism ecosystem, which needs to reopen and rebuild destinations. In the UK, the negative pandemic impacts call for government support and administrative sources to recover the visitor economy at least by 2023. A number of interventions, such as “Eat Out to Help Out” scheme and the Job Retenion scheme (furlough) help to keep the whole visitor economy business resilient.
It is quite interesting to see how UK regions prioritize different aspects of visitor economy in response to the COVID-19 impacts. In North Yorkshire, the tourism recovery actions are associated with Visit England’s “We’re Good to Go” and Yorkshire Recovery Plan – Re-Open, Recovery, Rebuild. Its recovery priority is mainly promoting and embedding the concept of “staycation”. In Tees Valley, a new, independent and sector-led Task Force was established to support the Visitor Economy and Cultural Industries sectors. This £1million Recovery Programme brought visitor, hospitality and culture sectors together to support local businesses growth and development beyond recovery.
Two major impacts draw my attention – domestic tourism demand and global economic recession. As travel restrictions heavily affected international travel flows, domestic tourism, instead, drives economic recovery at local levels. In China, for instance, domestic tourists reached a total of 1.87 billion in 2021. In particular, self-drive tours and high-speed rail tours have grown in popularity. However, this trend has declined since the first half of 2022 with the country’s ‘zero-Covid’ policies. According to a Forbes’ report in 2022,
“The decline in tourist visits is a part a lackluster performance by an economy that has been a world growth leader in recent decades. Second-quarter GDP growth of only 0.4%, reported on Friday, was below the government’s target of 5.5% expansion for this year. Spending by domestic tourists declined to $173 billion in the first half of this year from $248 billion a year earlier, according to Xinhua figures”.
Furthermore, the COVID pandemic has also triggered the shortage of supply chain logistics and results in many economies falling into recession. In 2022 August, Bank of England has warned the UK will fall into recession, along with high inflation, soaring energy bills and Russian – Ukraine war. These macro- factors will even bring the UK’s recession to the longest downturn since 2008.