The impact of COVID-19 on tourism. Notes for your sketch

Abstract

Up to February this year, tourism contributes 10.3% of global GDP in gross terms, representing one out of ten jobs worldwide, according to figures from the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC). Before the recent SARS-COVID2 pandemic, the western world lived at the edge of a complex reality that is now becoming more acute and which has to do directly with the impact of economic activity that is still anchored in the pursuit for massification, the incorporation of vulnerable populations as a labour force in often precarious conditions and the reduced questioning of their condition, in general terms, of over-exploitation and non-sustainability. Under these conditions, dealing with the economic, social, cultural and financial consequences of a pandemic such as the one facing our planet, implies for the tourism sector the detailed evaluation of its different dimensions of impact and, in addition, perhaps the rethinking of the need to build a different way of understanding tourism, which will undoubtedly emerge in a world whose interpersonal relations will no longer be the same. For all these reasons, this article draws up some of the most relevant aspects to be incorporated into the calculations to be made on direct and indirect consequences on the sector.