The full recovery of tourism must wait until 2025

OECD Tourism Trends and Policies 2022 says that many countries saw a strong rebound in tourism in 2022 thanks to pent-up demand, household savings and travel vouchers. However, international tourism is now not expected to recover until 2024 or 2025, or even later.

After six decades of steady growth, COVID-19 dealt a heavy blow to the industry. International tourism came to an almost complete standstill at the height of the pandemic, accounting for 77 cents of every US dollar of revenue lost in service exports in OECD countries in 2020. With domestic tourism also constrained, the direct contribution of tourism to GDP fell 1.9 percent. points in OECD countries with available data.

COVID-19 highlighted the vital role that tourism plays in global, national and local economies, says the report. Before the pandemic, tourism directly contributed 4.4% of GDP and 6.9% of employment, and tourism generated 20.5% of service-related exports on average across OECD countries.

The most recent evidence indicates that tourism has performed above expectations in many countries. International tourist flows in July 2022 were only 19.9% ​​below July 2019 levels in reporting OECD countries, although there were marked variations between regions. Arrivals in Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain exceeded 2019 levels, but in countries bordering Russia and Ukraine, tourist numbers were at least 30% below pre-pandemic levels in July 2022. In OECD countries in the Asia Pacific region, tourist arrivals were at least 40% lower than in 2019.

“The pandemic exposed underlying weaknesses in the wider tourism economy,” said OECD Secretary General Mathias Cormann. “The consequences of Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine now threaten the recovery of the sector.

The challenge for governments and companies is not only to boost tourism in the short term, but also to ensure the strength and sustainability of the sector in the long term.” costs of food and other inputs. The sector faces great uncertainty regarding to labor and skills shortages that risk further limiting the recovery Restoring safe mobility is also required to regain traveler confidence and tourism demand.

To support the recovery and transform the tourism sector, policy measures are needed to:

• Strengthen collaboration between the government and the private sector to support the recovery and shape a brighter future for tourism. For example, the 2022 US National Travel and Tourism Strategy builds on the commitment and capabilities of the entire Federal Government and will be implemented under the leadership of the Tourism Policy Council and in partnership with the private sector.
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• Ensuring a robust and stable tourism sector that is more resilient to future shocks – The pandemic and cost of living crisis have highlighted vulnerabilities in the sector and the need to build government and business capacity to react and adapt quickly, develop custom destinations. management approaches and promote a business environment in which SMEs can succeed. For example, the Chile Apoya al Turismo 2022 Program (launched in July 2022) is designed to finance training projects, business planning, consultancy, technical assistance, working capital and/or investment to support the reactivation of tourism SMEs.
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• Take sustained and transformative measures to promote the recovery of green tourism. For example, Norway has developed the RISM CO 2 calculator to estimate the amount of transport-related CO 2 emissions associated with visitors traveling to and within Norway and is one of several operational tools to help destinations switch to a more sustainable tourism planning and development under the National Tourism Strategy 2030.