Global tourism, which was left with $2.4 trillion in 2020 due to the pandemic, will lose between $1.7 trillion and $2.4 trillion this year, or between 1.9% and 2.7% of global GDP, according to a UN report presented wednesday, which predicts that Latin America, one of the regions most affected by COVID-19 , keep this year’s losses from 2020.
“The world needs a global effort for vaccination that will protect workers, mitigate social damage and make strategic decisions about tourism,” said Isabelle Durant, UNCTAD’s temporary secretary-general. According to the report, tourism in Latin American countries will continue its losses this year, with figures below the average, and predicts that only nations with high levels of vaccination can attract travelers and achieve a moderate recovery.
The report by the United Nations Agency for Trade and Development UNCTAD), in collaboration with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), indicates that the decline in tourism could lead to falls of up to 9 per cent of Ecuador’s gross domestic product (GDP), 2.4 per cent in Argentina or 2.3 per cent in Colombia. Somewhat less, due to the lower weight of tourism in the national economy, could be the decline in GDP for Mexico (between 1.3 and 1.6%) or in Brazil (0.6%), while Central America could fall by 11.9% of its GDP in the most pessimistic scenario and the Caribbean by 2.5%.
The report considers three possible scenarios: one in which tourist arrivals fall in 2021 by the same percentage as in 2020 (74% less than before the pandemic), another more “optimistic” in which the reduction is 63%, and finally, one at two speeds, due to the uneven progress of vaccination between developed and developing countries.
This third scenario, which predicts that tourism will partially recover in regions such as Europe or North America, but not yet in developing areas, estimates that arrivals will fall by only 37% in places with a high percentage of the population vaccinated, but will continue to plummet by 75% in those with lower immunization levels. “The main obstacles are travel restrictions, slow containment of the virus, poor confidence of people to travel and a poor economic environment,” unctad concludes.
