Impact of COVID-19 on the Tourism Sector

The COVID-19 global pandemic has created havoc and an unprecedented economic bearing on global economics, demand and supply disruption, etc. The virulence and the severity of the spread of the virus is so acute that it has caused a lot of job loss, unemployment, temporary shutdown of manufacturing output, and reduction in the consumption expenditure by people.

The COVID-19 outbreak has also brought a hard effect on the travel and tourism industry due to the temporary travel ban imposed by most of the countries. Tourism food services, transportation, entertainment, and hotel business are the main industries that would face the heat of the crisis. The economic costs in terms of tourism revenue out of this pandemic outbreak will continue to mount if the further spread of the virus is not taken care of. Methods like complete lockdown of the city and hard quarantine measures adopted by various countries are mostly a difficult affair for a third-world country like India. As per the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) interim economic assessment, if the number of visitors would decline due to the coronavirus outbreak, it would impose sizeable economic costs in OECD countries, as tourism comprises of 4.25% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 7% of employment share.