Before the pandemic, the sector directly contributed 4.4% of GDP, 6.9% of employment, and 21.5% of service exports in OECD countries, on average (and 6.5% of global exports according to the World Trade Organisation3). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Rebuilding tourism for the future: COVID-19 policy responses and recovery. There have been indications that resident attitudes are hardening to tourism in some places such as Hawaii where one survey showed only 54% of residents agreed that tourism has brought more benefits than problems, and Key West, where voters chose to ban big and dirty cruise ships to the port. What began as an educational project for schools was extended to the tourism sector, and although this has been developed initially as a domestic campaign, it has great potential for international appeal when markets return. There have been significant challenges in understanding which businesses and services are closed, whether these are permanently closed (or closed just for the season), or open, perhaps with reduced capacity or an adapted offer. Please submit the following details to download the report. The crisis is an opportunity to rethink tourism for the future. Governments need to consider the longer-term implications of the crisis, while capitalising on digitalisation, supporting the low carbon transition, and promoting the structural transformation needed to build a stronger, more sustainable and resilient tourism economy. Under the central scenario, domestic tourism is expected to recover to 2019 levels in summer 2021, with international tourism recovery forecast for April 2023 (i.e. As with the OECD projections, scenario-based approaches provide some directions for tourism recovery, but are necessarily based on assumptions and simplifications, and subject to ongoing adjustment and revision. The outlook for tourism is extraordinarily uncertain, and recovery will depend on the interlinked consequences of the economic and health crisis on demand and supply side factors. OECD estimates are based on international tourism arrivals in the OECD area. This is having very tangible economic and social consequences for many people, places and businesses, and the wider economy. DMOs have also supported businesses towards digitalisation for instance to update their changing-status details, continue to have a presence with their customers, and potentially access new markets or diversify outside of the visitor economy. They launched the Paradise at Home campaign to encourage exploration between the islands of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the accommodation and food services subsectors alone globally provides employment for 144 million workers, about 30% of whom are employed in small tourism businesses with 29 employees.6 Many of these jobs are customer-facing, exposing workers also to the health risks from the virus (e.g. Domestic tourism is providing a much needed boost to help sustain many tourism destinations and businesses, and will continue to be a key driver of recovery in the short to medium term. OECD Policy Responses to Coronavirus (COVID-19), International trade in travel and tourism services: economic impact and policy responses during the COVID-19 crisis, Covid-19 and Tourism: Assessing the Economic Consequences, The impact of COVID-19 on the tourism sector, 174 million Travel and Tourism jobs could be lost due to COVID-19 and travel restrictions, Behavioural changes in tourism in times of Covid-19: Employment scenarios and policy options, https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34348, Tackling coronavirus (COVID-19) - Browse OECD contributions. The invisible burden of tourism has shifted, creating new frontiers: changes in market demand have brought different destinationimpacts (and new opportunities), and businesses that have struggled to survive are now required to adapt and innovate. Temporary COVID-19 measures have opened up new possibilities to redesign public spaces for the longer term, to make them more pedestrian friendly, more accessible, and cleaner and greener. They are now thinking about tourism in terms of how it can help the city as a whole to recover, not just how the sector itself can recover. Wed also like to thank the five Roots to Recovery external advisors who donated their time and considerable expertise to support the project: Anna Barrera, Sustainable Tourism & Hospitality Consultant, A2B Consulting, Julie Klein, Principal, Confluence Sustainability, Milena Nikolova, Behavioral Expert and Founder, BehaviourSMART. The crisis is putting millions of jobs in the tourism sector at risk. This could mean a shortfall in services for visitors, and a source of tension between residents and visitors for restricted-capacity activities. International tourismrefers totourismthat crosses national borders for tourism purposes (leisure, business etc.). OECD (2019), "Providing new OECD evidence on tourism trade in value added",OECD Tourism Papers, No. Strengthened multi-lateral co-operation and robust support is essential to reactivate tourism. Step one might be to determine which businesses are essential for creating a sense of place, and which provide services valued by both residents and visitors. Continued government support should already start to build toward more sustainable and resilient tourism economy. Tourism is highly labour intensive and provides a high volume of jobs for low skilled workers, together with higher skilled jobs. The road ahead is brighter as progress on vaccines has lifted hopes, but challenges remains and recovery will be uneven across countries, and across sectors. DMOs can help businesses to adapt and innovate to meet the needs of the domestic market, which will allow businesses to achieve an optimum blend of resident, domestic and international customers. The Travel Foundation provided technical support and a critical friend role for these DMOs to put in place plans for longer term success. Internationally oriented businesses pivoting to domestic customers have found there are some marked differences in needs, with domestic visitors having very different requirements. Switzerland: According to the Swiss Economic Institute (KOF) the number of overnight stays is predicted to fall by 34% on 2020. Also, not all destinations or businesses have benefited, due to ongoing restrictions on movement within countries and altered demand patterns and behaviours. This note is an abridged version of the OECD Tourism Paper: Mitigating the impact of COVID-19 and preparing for recovery: https://doi.org/10.1787/47045bae-en . The indirect impacts of tourism are also significant, exacerbating the size of the shock on national and local economies. Fares on mountain railways could rise significantly if passenger numbers are drastically reduced. Clear communication, well-designed information policy and clarity on the epidemiological criteria will be particularly important where there is a need to change travel restrictions and containment measures in response to virus outbreaks and the shifting sanitary situation. Many countries are also now developing measures to build a more resilient tourism economy post COVID-19. This new app allows users to see whats open near them, what features and services are on offer and how busy their favourite businesses are helping them make safe and informed decisions about when and how to visit. Countries need to develop collaborative systems across borders to safety resume travel, restore traveller and business confidence, stimulate demand and accelerate tourism recovery. More efficient international co-ordination systems are also needed to respond to future shocks. In this environment, tourism is high on the global policy agenda, and similar calls have been made by other international institutions, including the United Nations10, World Bank11 and World Trade Organisation12. These solutions also need to be feasible to implement, with sufficient capacity available to ensure these systems are can function reliably. Safety and health policy issues also. Colorado Tourism Office provided a technical assistance programme for its small associations, and grants to support product development innovation, accelerating an existing focus on building the capacity of businesses. Since then, businesses have collapsed, attitudes have shifted, and politics and technology have moved on, opening up new possibilities. two years longer). Traveller confidence has been hit hard by the crisis, and the ongoing uncertainty. Policy makers should leverage the opportunity to reboot the tourism economy on a stronger, fairer and more sustainable footing. Germany: The German Federal Competence Centre for Tourisms latest Recovery-Check forecasts from July 2020 identify three possible scenarios for domestic and international tourism recovery. While flexible policy solutions are needed to enable the tourism economy to live alongside the virus in the short to medium term, it is important to look beyond this and take steps to learn from the crisis, which has revealed gaps in government and industry preparedness and response capacity. Crisis has been a call to action to governments, at all levels, to respond in a co-ordinated way, and has highlighted the importance of integrated tourism policy approaches to support recovery. written by Ben Lynam, The Travel Foundation, Last year we partnered with the Travel Foundation on the Roots to Recovery initiative, which supported four DMOs with their longer-term recovery planning. This will enable DMOs to start a process of realigning towards resident needs, and towards destination management, with tourism as a means to an end, not for tourisms sake. With no international visitors, marketing has in some cases taken a back seat, and instead DMOs have been engaging more than ever with local businesses and a broader set of stakeholders. For some destinations and their business partners, the pressure to recoup losses and regain liquidity will no doubt take over, with discounting and cost-cutting, and the potential for a race to the bottom. Tourism has benefited significantly from general economic stimulus measures. Particularly with businesses that have experienced job losses, those remaining employees have found they need to acquire new skills, and DMOs have been their main source of guidance and support. Growth has rebounded in many parts of the economy, but tourism and other sectors have been slower to bounce back, and this is impacting recovery in many countries9. Improving the evidence base to inform policy and business decisions will be key, through information gathering, research and data analysis. Indeed, this could be the start of a more holistic approach to managing visitor flow, to improve visitor experiences and even-out the peaks and troughs in demand. Domestic tourism has restarted in many countries, but can only partially compensate for the loss of inbound tourism. waiters, air stewards, hotel receptionists). Tourism continues to be one of the sectors hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic and the outlook remains highly uncertain. Overall spend is generally lower and domestic visitors have a shorter stay on average. Quantifying the current and future impacts of the crisis on the tourism sector is challenging, with the crisis exposing shortcomings in tourism statistical information systems, including a lack of robust, comparable and timely data to inform policy and business decisions. While it is still too early to say with any certainty what these will be, a number of initial lessons are outlined: Crisis has been a call to action to governments, at all levels, to respond in a co-ordinated way, and has highlighted the importance of integrated tourism policy approaches to support recovery. There has been some pick up in domestic tourism activities since the middle of the year, due in part to displacement effects of international travel restrictions. Find out more about theSustainability Working Group here, or email katie@citynationplace.com to find out how you can get involved. Edinburgh Tourism Action Group focused initially on creating an inventory of businesses and pulling together the right information, guidance, and a programme of events. It will, most likely, be a slow and bumpy ride. Tourism policy will need to be more reactive and in the long term it will move to more flexible systems, able to adapt faster to changes of policy focus. The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to hit hard, with international tourism expected to decrease by around 80% in 2020. People are likely to prefer private solutions when travelling, avoiding big gatherings, and prioritising private means of transport, which may have an adverse impact on the environment. The halt in tourism is having a knock-on impact on the wider economy, given the interlinked nature of the sector. World Bank, Washington, DC. There has been a major pivot to online booking systems and a requirement to book ahead, affecting the spontaneity and ease of visitor experiences. This is an excellent time to engage with residents and facilitate the conversation on why do we want tourism. 1 December 2020. Destinations and tourism businesses need help to be ready to provide tourism services to meet demand when the recovery comes. Sector-specific supports are needed to address the particular needs of tourism workers, businesses and destinations, and support wider economic recovery. Grenada Tourism Authority commissioned a domestic tourism survey to better understand the benefits, impact and potential for growth of domestic tourism, an area that hadnt been a focus previously. Reduced investment will call for active policies to incentivise and restore investment in the tourism sector to maintain the quality of the tourism offer and promote a sustainable recovery. And whilst we can expect an eventual return to 2019 visitors levels (by 2023 or 2024 at the earliest, according to UNWTO and PATA), in many other ways the tourismof 2019 will never return. They are looking at the full tourism ecosystem and identifying the ideal visitor profiles to bring back the health of the visitor economy and provide positive impacts on communities. Destinations that rely heavily on international, business and events tourism are particularly struggling, with many coastal, regional and rural areas faring better than cities. Visitors will be looking to plan their trips in greater detail, and DMOs can help to coordinate this with an integrated digital platform. Changes in visitor flows, for instance, to enable social distancing in town centres, mean that normal transport and mobility has been disrupted, and temporary measures (such as barriers and signs) may impact on aesthetics and experiences. The unprecedented shock to the tourism economy is being compounded by the evolving sanitary situation. The tourism sector will be a very different in 2021 to what it was in 2019. Will queues become a thing of the past? Rebuilding Tourism Competitiveness : Tourism Response, Recovery and Resilience to the COVID-19 Crisis. food production, agriculture, transport, business services).4 UNCTAD, meanwhile, estimates that global GDP losses due to the crisis in tourism could amount to 2.8% of the worlds GDP (USD1.2trillion), if international tourist arrivals drop by 66%, with the consequences most marked in countries like Croatia (potential drop in GDP of 8%), Portugal (6%), Morocco (4%), Greece (4%), Ireland (3%) and Spain (3%). The global scale and extended duration of the crisis, continued uncertainty, and the interlinked economic and health nature of this crisis makes it unlike any previous shock to the tourism system. As part of the project, the Travel Foundation created and tested a Recovery Plan Assessment Frameworkwhich has since been developed into a handbook and a workshop programme to help even more destinations in their recovery planning, and has so far been delivered by the charity for DMOs in Mexico and the Caribbean, with the Pacific Islands and Greece soon to come. Not all businesses will survive the crisis and capacity in the sector is likely to be reduced for a period, limiting the recovery. These include preparing plans to support the sustainable recovery of tourism, promoting the digital transition and move to a greener tourism system, and rethinking tourism for the future. The crisis is putting millions of jobs in the tourism sector at risk. The opportunity is therefore to develop marketing plans and niche products that build out from the local focus, using local people and insights to reinforce a sense of place that will appeal to a wider and international audience. Attempts to forecast the impact of the pandemic on the tourism economy have repeatedly been overtaken by the rapidly evolving sanitary situation, and changes to containment measures. Need an Account? Information such as Googles Popular times and real-time business data, or live webcams, coupled with promotion of alternative places may be effective at reducing congestion and wear and tear of high-use sites while establishing new places for the visitor itinerary. The outlook for tourism is extraordinarily uncertain, and recovery will depend on the interlinked consequences of the economic and health crisis on demand and supply side factors. Although all destinationswill have their unique contexts and issues, and the COVID-19 pandemic has affected places in markedly different ways (while many popular attractions were shuttered, elsewhere places suffered from domestic-driven overtourism), there are also many commonalities. Many businesses, particularly SMEs which typically have less access to finance, are struggling to survive. Crisis is a once in a lifetime opportunity to move toward fairer, more sustainable and resilient models of tourism development. The unprecedented shock to the tourism economy is being compounded by the evolving sanitary situation. This has consequences beyond the tourism economy, with the many other sectors that support, and are supported by, tourism also significantly impacted. There is also a need to ensure visitors are equipped with the right information on how to be safe and responsible in the great outdoors, and an opportunity to engage with residents, and reassure them that the necessary measures are in place. No meaningful recovery in international tourism flows is foreseen until well into 2021, and is likely to take some years. It also brought the destinations together to share ideas, issues and concerns and benefit from collective support. Integrated platforms also present an opportunity to serve up personalised suggestions for visitors to help them plan, and to bring back some of that spontaneity that makes exploring a place so much fun. United Kingdom: VisitBritain have modelled a range of scenarios of the short-term impact on inbound and domestic tourism. This brings challenges for the sector, but also opportunities to encourage innovation, drive new business models, explore new niches/markets, open up new destinations, and move to more sustainable and resilient tourism development models. The Travel Foundations expert team reviewed and strengthened these plans with a focus on increasing opportunities for community livelihoods, strong and resilient local supply chains, resource protection, and overall destination management capacities, drawing on its nearly two decades of experience globally. The COVID-19 crisis has been a huge shock to the tourism economy, severely impacting peoples livelihoods, neighbourhoods and businesses. Edinburghs Spaces for People initiative is aimed at making the city and its surrounds safer and easier to get around, and the changes introduced for COVID-19 are an opportunity to accelerate that programme. This is a no regrets time to invest in upgrading outdoor infrastructure. Traditional forecasting methods are unreliable in the current environment. OECD now estimates international tourism1 will fall by around 80% in 2020. While there has been some resumption of international tourism activity, this remains very limited. The crisis has highlighted shortcomings in the availability of timely, comparable, granular data in quickly evolving situations. Here at City Nation Place, we believe that its a critical time for destinations to re-imagine their tourism product and to implement more sustainable systems. Perhaps it is time to trial electric scooter hire, create new cycle paths, or permanently reclaim streets which were previously congested with traffic, and repurpose them for people and outdoor entertainment. Providing policy clarity and taking steps to limit uncertainty (to the extent possible) will be crucial to support tourism recovery.