tourism in post pandemic

Future Changes and Challenges for Post-Covid-19 Tourism

• First Online: 29 April 2024

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• Anna Trono 4  

In conformity with the priorities established in the UNWTO’s global guidelines, today more than ever, the recovery of the tourism sector can contribute to the development and implementation of plans that serve the sustainable development objectives laid out in Agenda 2030. The new tourism sector will thus have a responsible vision of the objectives in terms of public health, social inclusion, conservation of biodiversity, climate safeguards, the circular economy, good governance and sustainable finance. The current vulnerability of tourism could thus create the conditions for a recalibration of the world economic structure, contributing to recovery plans on a broader scale. Like all crises, the current one also represents an opportunity, in this case to accelerate the creation of sustainable tourism models. The resilience of this tourism will depend on the sector’s ability to balance the needs of communities and the planet with the socio-economic advantages it generates.

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Trono, A. (2024). Future Changes and Challenges for Post-Covid-19 Tourism. In: Trono, A., Castronuovo, V., Kosmas, P. (eds) Managing Natural and Cultural Heritage for a Durable Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52041-9_5

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Post-pandemic travel: the trends we’ll see when the world opens up again

Lecturer in Tourism, University of Central Lancashire

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Katerina Antoniou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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It’s been a while since the question “where should I travel to next?” has felt within reach.

COVID-19 continues to affect travel by forcing governments to impose country-specific bans and restrictions . However, as vaccination programmes roll out, many of us hope to travel again at some point in the near future, even if not immediately. With that in mind, what are the factors that will shape our travel decisions in a post-pandemic era?

Post-COVID tourism

Although significant restrictions are still in place, travel agency adverts have become more frequent recently. According to reports , holiday bookings have once again begun to soar as people look beyond lockdowns.

COVID-19-related travel conditions will complicate holidays for the foreseeable future – including potential measures like requiring people to be vaccinated . The fear is that this will limit foreign travel options for those who haven’t received the vaccine. It may even affect people’s ability to travel domestically. Economic issues will also affect travel globally, since so many people have lost income during the pandemic.

These challenges will shape our decisions when it comes to choosing a holiday. By the time the pandemic ends, the days of choosing holidays based on destination or attractions will be over. Instead, the industry and travellers alike will be much more concerned with personal needs.

Faced with the desire to travel and practical obstacles against it, people are expected to make more considered travel choices. Tourists in the post-COVID era will be less willing to compromise on their next trip. They will have much higher expectations of hospitality service providers and be much more demanding. In order to keep up, the industry should prioritise offering services, facilities and experiences that cater to wellness, health, and overall wellbeing. They will need to focus on high hygiene standards, which tourists are expected to covet.

It won’t be surprising to see trends like health tourism, wellness tourism , spiritual and potentially religious tourism rising in popularity too. Thanks to the pandemic, tourists are paying more attention than ever to these needs whether they’re urgent health concerns, luxury treatments, or the pursuit of physical, intellectual and spiritual wellness after over a year of living with restrictions.

Human-oriented tourism

According to tourism academic Fabio Carbone, post-COVID tourism is also expected to focus more on people than destinations. Those eager to get away from measures like social distancing will likely use travel to embrace existing relationships with loved ones living abroad or seek new encounters. Carbone suggests that because of this, post-Covid tourism will pivot towards prioritising human development, dialogue, and peace.

Popular types of tourism are therefore likely to include: travel for visiting friends and relatives, volunteer tourism, and peace tourism.

Volunteer tourism – or voluntourism – is a niche tourist activity which essentially means volunteering in a foreign destination. Although some question whether it positively contributes to developing countries and underprivileged communities, voluntourism has generated valuable humanitarian work. With economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic having hit developing countries more severely , effective voluntourism isn’t only desired, it’s necessary.

Read more: Dark tourism memorial sites will help us heal from the trauma of coronavirus

Peace tourism , on the other hand, refers to an interest in visiting specific destinations in order to either examine how peace is developed and celebrated there through research or studies, or contribute to a destination’s efforts to establish peace after conflict. Peace tourism typically involves visiting peace memorials or conflict zones with the aim of learning from the mistakes of past wars and helping to resolve or prevent existing conflict.

Examples of peace tourism activities include educational field trips to sites such as the Berlin Wall Memorial and the Hiroshima Peace Park . It might also take the form of attending workshops and conferences among conflict resolution professionals or going on guided peace walks that delve into histories of achieving or searching for peace. Visiting famous peace artworks and peace-themed exhibitions , as well as festivals and perfomances are also considered peace tourism activities.

The tourism industry has a unique opportunity to reflect on its future. If it wants to make an impact, it needs to prioritise providing quality, affordable experiences and putting customers first. Whenever travel resumes in the post-pandemic world, promoting specific destinations and landmarks will no longer make sense. It may be difficult in the face of restrictive and ever-changing travel corridors, but the travel industry has little choice but to remodel holidays around catering to our wants and desires.

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A Year without travel

In Hawaii, Reimagining Tourism for a Post-Pandemic World

Before Covid, ‘tourism was at this point where everything was about tourists.’ With the one-year anniversary of travel’s collapse, the state, like other overtouristed places, is hoping for a reset.

By Tariro Mzezewa

For a visitor who was on the island of Oahu in 2019 when a record 10.4 million people visited Hawaii , returning to Honolulu nearly a year after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic is breathtaking.

At Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, souvenir shops and nearly all food vendors have closed. In neighborhoods around the state’s capital, restaurants and bars, tour operators and travel agencies have shuttered permanently, and many that remain appear to be shells of the popular jaunts they were before the pandemic. Hotels with skeleton staffs. No tourist-filled buses blocking the entrances to attractions. Plenty of room to move on sidewalks without bumping shoulders.

Meanwhile, the state continues to solidify its reopening procedures for travelers from the mainland and international destinations as well as between the islands.

And yet, according to one survey by the Hawaii Tourism Authority, the agency charged with promoting Hawaii around the world, about two-thirds of Hawaii residents say they still do not want tourists to return to the islands.

“Before the pandemic, tourism was at this point where everything was about tourists,” said Lindsey Ozawa, a farmer and chef in He’eia on Oahu. “Tourism had become extractive and hurtful, with tourists coming here and taking, taking, taking, taking, without any reciprocation with locals.”

Mr. Ozawa’s frustrations are felt by people beyond the Pacific, in popular destinations like Machu Picchu, Venice, Barcelona and Iceland, where residents bemoan inconsiderate travelers, damage to natural resources, overcrowding and the rising cost of housing because of short-term rentals created for tourists.

In those places, as in Hawaii, the screeching halt in travel after the World Health Organization’s March 11 declaration of a pandemic provided a moment to reimagine and reconfigure tourism. Without visitors running amok, institutions, government agencies and individuals who work in the travel industry or are touched by it have been searching for ways to change a sector that many describe as a necessary evil or an addictive drug from which destinations need to wean themselves.

In September, representatives of 22 European cities, including Berlin, Bologna and Prague, met with a European Commission leader to call for stricter regulations on short-term vacation rentals. In Venice, officials have taken steps to better manage the city’s crowds by collecting data on visitors’ movements — working from a “smart” control room, CNN reported , officials use phone data to see where tourists are from, how long they spend in the city and which places they visit.

And back in the United States, in November, residents of Key West, Fla., have approved three referendums to limit cruise visitors.

Among the goals of these destinations, as they await the return of visitors, is to make tourism better, not only for guests, but for locals and their communities, and to broaden their economies, so they aren’t almost solely reliant on tourism.

Rethinking state parks

For travelers heading to Oahu, a hike up Diamond Head State Monument is likely on the to-do list. The distinctive silhouette of the crater is as much a part of the quintessential tourist experience as a visit to Waikiki Beach.

In 2019, more than 1.2 million visitors went to Diamond Head. The park was open every day. Staff had to rush to clean bathrooms, which led to lines of irritated visitors. Wear-and-tear was visible from the litter near the summit to the paint on the sign at the bottom of the hike that’s a popular spot for taking photos.

In recent years, getting into Diamond Head has been a frustrating experience for tourists. The combination of tour buses depositing hundreds of guests at the park’s entrance throughout the day, with many others opting to either drive or walk in, led to crowding and long waits to enter the park. Residents said that the overflow into the neighborhood made everyday living exhausting.

Cassandra Springer, a state park ranger, said that people who didn’t prepare for the hike and became dehydrated often had to be rescued . Others regularly strayed off designated areas, saying they didn’t see the signs. Ms. Springer said the badly behaved guests were, at times, overwhelming.

“I’d tell people to stay where they are supposed to, to follow the rules, and I’d go to the summit in the afternoon and talk to people, and say, try to take your pictures, enjoy the view, but please don’t linger, don’t crowd. Other people would like to see the view,” Ms. Springer said. Some would argue with her or try to justify why they were allowed to break the rules.

At Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources, staff and leaders said they felt the pain of losing tourists and their money in 2020, but they also welcomed the pause to rethink how to run a state park.

After successfully creating a reservation system at Haena State Park on Kauai and at Waianapanapa State Park on Maui, limiting parking spaces and implementing a slew of other changes at the parks, the department turned its attention to Diamond Head.

During the pandemic, the Department of Land and Natural Resources added traffic lights on either side of Kahala Tunnel, which visitors must drive and walk through to enter and exit the park, essentially turning the tunnel into an alternating one-way access route. The pedestrian walkway at the entrance was more than doubled to encourage people to walk in rather than drive. The parking vendor created a designated location for ride-share drivers to drop off and pick up passengers.

Curt Cottrell, an administrator for the Division of State Parks, said that the department has raised prices for nonresidents and hopes to lower patronage into the park in order to make the experience of hiking more enjoyable.

Mr. Cottrell added that making life easier for locals who live in the community was an important part of the process of reimagining the park and how tourists visit it.

As in many other destinations that are rethinking tourism, technology and data are key to making changes. In advance of post-pandemic crowds, the department is culling through pre-pandemic and current data to understand guest behavior. Cellphone information provided by UberMedia and on-site park data allow Ms. Springer and Mr. Cottrell to get an idea of how many guests have out-of-state phone numbers, which of those people are wandering in parts of the park where they aren’t supposed to be, and what time of day they typically arrive and leave, which will inform how the reservation system is set up.

There is currently an effort to implement a reservation system to limit the number of people in the park at any one time, and Mr. Cottrell and Ms. Springer are hopeful that they will be able to offer different prices for different times of day and the year, all changes that the pandemic made possible to reimagine.

“These kinds of changes would enhance the quality of the experience,” Mr. Cottrell said. “Those are the things we want to have in place before we hit, God forbid, the 2019 massive tourism levels again.”

A shift away from tourism

Conversations with locals about tourism and the future of Hawaii tend to fall into three camps. There are the absolutists who say that tourism is destroying Hawaii and should be done away with. Those in this camp tend to believe that the Tourism Authority, which received $79 million in transient accommodations tax funds that are added to the daily cost of guest lodging, should no longer receive funding from the government . That money, they say, should go to local communities.

The second group, the status quo, takes the opposite stance: Tourism should remain the lifeblood of the economy — it’s easy, it works, keeps people employed and everyone knows how to live with it.

The third group, the compromisers, is of the opinion that tourism can and should exist in concert with other sectors like farming, retail, health care and culture, and not trample on them as it has in the recent past.

That last group points to the potential for growth in farming and what are called “green collar jobs,” which grew during the pandemic, as unemployment rose in other sectors of the economy, primarily tourism.

Kako‘o Oiwi is a farm that has been working to restore hundreds of acres of wetlands to their native state by cultivating taro, a root vegetable and once a staple in Hawaii, in abundant, terraced patches. Before the pandemic, the farm’s leaders had been discussing how to amp up its eco-tourism programs. They were surprised when more locals started coming by to work the land last year.

“I realized that people don’t have the time to come here under normal circumstances,” said Mr. Ozawa, the farmer and chef.

Such activities might not be able to replace tourism, but can be added to the tourism economy when it recovers. One of the organizations that has partnered with Kako‘o Oiwi to provide resources and workers is Kupu , a nonprofit that provides service programs in conservation and sustainability.

Last year, with stimulus money from the CARES Act, Kupu hired more than 350 people, many of whom had lost their jobs in hospitality and tourism, as part of its Kupu Aina Corps program. Participants worked on farms and in other community jobs. Between September and December, Kupu produced more than $6.5 million in economic benefit for Hawaii, but ran out of funding.

John Leong, the chief executive of Kupu, said this model could be expanded to offer employment to more people as a means of diversifying the economy and providing those who work in tourism new opportunities and skills.

“There’s an opportunity to tweak tourism so it has more of a values-driven focus, culturally and environmentally,” Mr. Leong said. “We should give people the tourism industry and give them an alternative.”

For tourists around the world, Hawaii’s main draw is its beauty: beaches, parks, fresh air — all natural resources, which, increasingly, locals worry are being harmed by too many tourists. These resources, many point out, can be overused and damaged. They are finite.

“In order for tourism to remain vibrant, the land and community need to be cared for,” Mr. Leong said. “When tourism reaches a point where it extracts without giving back, that threatens community, the environment and more.”

Promoting Hawaiian culture

Nestled in the Kalihi neighborhood of Honolulu, is the Bishop Museum, a natural history museum that focuses on Hawaii’s culture, past and present. During the pandemic, the museum’s team has been developing its virtual memberships, its Japanese language programing and it has doubled down on partnerships with organizations. When the museum opened in June after closing earlier in the year, its 15-acre ​outdoor area became a space for exhibitions and a place to take an audio tour of the gardens, listen to live music and more.

“Part of what the pandemic made a lot of us do is think about what’s important, what we value the most and where to put strategic investments,” said Melanie Ide, the museum’s president and chief executive.

In 1921, the museum endorsed research presented by the anthropologist Louis R. Sullivan at the Second International Eugenics Conference. Mr. Sullivan, with financial support from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, spent time in Hawaii photographing, interviewing and studying locals, with the intention of measuring and classifying the physical traits of a “pure” Native Hawaiian race. Although eugenics has long been discredited, myths about racial superiority being a scientific rather than social construct have perpetuated racism and had traumatic effects on communities in Hawaii and beyond.

The museum’s current exhibition, “(Re)Generations: Challenging Scientific Racism in Hawaiʻi” takes this on. It reappropriates Mr. Sullivan’s own work and uses it to celebrate the ways Native Hawaiians have reclaimed his photographs, plaster busts and tools to learn about their ancestors, genealogy and family. When the exhibition opened in February, 100 years after Mr. Sullivan presented his work, many of the people who attended were the descendants of those who had been prodded and violated by the anthropologist.

The exhibition is also a case study in how to take a different approach to tourism. The show’s curators — the museum’s archive director, Leah Caldera, the archaeology curator, Jillian Swift and the genome scientist and University of California San Diego professor Keolu Fox — said it was created for Hawaiians. Interviews with the families whose stories are a key part of the exhibition, and rather than being spoken for by outsiders, the families speak for themselves. Their heirlooms are included and family histories underscored.

But the exhibition can also be appreciated by tourists looking to learn something new about the islands or Pacific Island cultures more broadly.

By having a program that centers on Hawaiian history and experiences in a space that is frequented by tourists, the museum is sending the message that anyone who enters must be willing to engage with more of Hawaii than its beaches.

“A lot of people come to Hawaii and don’t know where they are except what might be in the popular imagination and culture,” Ms. Ide said. “We hope people who come here can get oriented and grounded in the culture of Hawaii.”

A more regenerative role for tourism

For many Hawaii residents, a large part of rethinking tourism involves rethinking the role of the tourism authority, which was established by the state legislature in 1998 to serve as “the state’s lead agency supporting tourism.” Many Hawaii residents believe that the organization has become too powerful and overfunded, pushing tourism at the expense of everything else.

After the outbreak of the pandemic, Governor David Ige issued an executive order ceasing the disbursement of hotel and other transient accommodation taxes paid by visitors to the agency. Those funds have, since last year, been utilized to support other government operations.

Many are hopeful that John De Fries, who became the chief executive of the Tourism Authority in September, will be able to lead the islands into an era where tourism is more regenerative than extractive. Mr. De Fries is the first Native Hawaiian to lead the organization and business owners who rely on tourism are counting on him to represent their interests as he thinks about how to market the islands in a post-pandemic world.

“We are at a time when our very survival is at stake,” Mr. De Fries said. “We understand that there are currencies other than cash that we have to reconcile. Some of those other currencies are the natural environment, a sense of well-being in the community. There’s currency in ensuring that Hawaiian cultural traditions are and should be protected.”

In January 2020, the tourism authority created a 2020-2025 strategic plan with four pillars or areas of focus — natural resources, Hawaiian culture, community and brand marketing — to manage tourism responsibly going forward. When the pandemic hit, the agency decided to continue working on the plan. In particular, it kept consulting with residents about how they feel about tourism.

Mr. De Fries, who grew up in Waikiki and has seen tourism turn to overtourism over the past three decades, said that his approach for moving forward will emphasize regenerative travel through the Hawaiian ancestral idea of malama which means “to nurture.” The four pillars, he said, will be a guiding force.

“Everyone I talk to — hotel owners, elders, even the people who don’t like tourism — agrees that we all want future generations to have a natural resource base that’s in better condition than it is now, so we have to care for it and anyone with any aloha for this place will understand that.”

It’s a lesson that other overtouristed destinations might learn from.

Paige McClanahan contributed reporting from Europe.

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An earlier version of this article misstated the status of entrance fees for nonresidents for Diamond Head State Monument in Hawaii. The park has raised the rates.

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Tariro Mzezewa is a travel reporter at The New York Times.  More about Tariro Mzezewa

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• 23 Nov 2022

International tourism is on track to reach 65% of pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2022 as the sector continues to bounce back from the pandemic.

An estimated 700 million tourists travelled internationally between January and September , more than double (+133%) the number recorded for the same period in 2021. This equates to 63% of 2019 levels and puts the sector on course to reach 65% of its pre-pandemic levels this year, in line with UNWTO scenarios. Results were boosted by strong pent-up demand, improved confidence levels and the lifting of restrictions in an increasing number of destinations.

Highlighting the speed at which the sector has recovered from the worst crisis in its history, the latest World Tourism Barometer from UNWTO reveals that monthly arrivals were 64% below 2019 levels in January 2022 and had reached -27% by September. An estimated 340 million international arrivals were recorded in the third quarter of 2022 alone, almost 50% of the nine-month total.

Europe continues to lead global recovery

Europe continues to lead the rebound of international tourism . The region welcomed 477 million international arrivals in January-September 2022 (68% of the world total), hitting 81% of pre-pandemic levels. This was more than double that of 2021 (+126%) with results boosted by strong intra-regional demand and travel from the United States. Europe saw particularly robust performance in Q3, when arrivals reached almost 90% of 2019 levels.

At the same time, the Middle East saw international arrivals more than triple (+225%) year on year in January-September 2022, climbing to 77% of pre-pandemic levels.. Africa (+166%) and the Americas (+106%) also recorded strong growth compared to 2021, reaching 63% and 66% of 2019 levels, respectively. In Asia and the Pacific (+230%) arrivals more than tripled in the first nine months of 2022, reflecting the opening of many destinations, including Japan at the end of September. However, arrivals in Asia and the Pacific remained 83% below 2019 levels. China, a key source market for the region, remains closed.

Arrivals and receipts at – or above – pre-pandemic levels

Several subregions reached 80% to 90% of their pre-pandemic arrivals in January-September 2022. Western Europe (88%) and Southern Mediterranean Europe (86%) saw the fastest recovery towards 2019 levels. The Caribbean, Central America (both 82%) and Northern Europe (81%) also recorded strong results. Destinations reporting arrivals above pre-pandemic levels in the nine months through September include Albania, Ethiopia, Honduras, Andorra, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, El Salvador and Iceland.

In the month of September arrivals surpassed pre-pandemic levels in the Middle East (+3% over 2019) and the Caribbean (+1%) and came close in Central America (-7%), Northern Europe (-9%) and Southern and Mediterranean Europe (-10%).

Meanwhile, some destinations recorded notable increases in international tourism receipts in the first seven to nine months of 2022, including Serbia, Romania, Türkiye, Latvia, Portugal, Pakistan, Mexico, Morocco and France. The recovery can also be seen in outbound tourism spending from major source markets, with strong results from France where expenditure reached -8% through September, compared to 2019. Other markets reporting strong spending in the first six to nine months of 2022 were Germany, Belgium, Italy, the United States, Qatar, India and Saudi Arabia.  

Strong demand for air travel and hotel accommodation

The robust recovery of tourism is also reflected in various industry indicators such as air capacity and hotel metrics, as recorded in the UNWTO Tourism Recovery Tracker . Air seat capacity on international routes (measured in available seat-kilometres or ASKs) in January-August reached 62% of 2019 levels, with Europe (78%) and the Americas (76%) posting the strongest results. Worldwide domestic capacity rose to 86% of 2019 levels, with the Middle East (99%) virtually achieving pre-pandemic levels (IATA).

Meanwhile, according to STR, global hotel occupancy rates reached 66% in September 2022, from 43% in January. Europe led the way with occupancy levels at 77% in September 2022, following rates of 74% in July and August. The Americas (66%), the Middle East (63%) and Africa (61%) all saw occupancy rates above 60% in September. By subregion, Southern Mediterranean Europe (79%), Western Europe (75%) and Oceania (70%) showed the highest occupancy rates in September 2022.

Cautious optimism for the months ahead

The challenging economic environment, including persistently high inflation and soaring energy prices, aggravated by the Russian offensive in Ukraine, could weigh on the pace of recovery in Q4 and into 2023. The latest survey among the UNWTO Panel of Tourism Experts shows a downgrade in confidence levels for the last four months of 2022, reflecting more cautious optimism. Despite growing challenges pointing to a softening of the recovery pace, export revenues from tourism could reach USD 1.2 to 1.3 trillion in 2022, a 60-70% increase over 2021, or 70-80% of the USD 1.8 trillion recorded in 2019.

Related links

• Download the News Release in PDF
• UNWTO World Tourism Barometer | Volume 20 • Issue 6 • November 2022 | EXCERPT
• World Tourism Barometer (PPT version)
• UNWTO Tourism Recovery Tracker

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Related content, international tourism to reach pre-pandemic levels in 2024, international tourism to end 2023 close to 90% of pre-p..., tourism’s importance for growth highlighted in world ec..., international tourism swiftly overcoming pandemic downturn.

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How quickly is tourism recovering from COVID-19?

The pandemic helped fuel a decline in tourism globally. Image:  Unsplash/Markus Spiske

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Stay up to date:, travel and tourism.

• Tourists spent an extra 1.8 billion nights in the European Union in 2021 compared with the year before.
• But this is still almost 40% lower than pre-pandemic levels, according to EU statistics.
• Tourism is an important sector for the world economy, and is expected to continue recovering gradually in 2022.
• However, there are still risks – including Russia's invasion of Ukraine and COVID-19 variants.

Tourism was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, as lockdowns restricted people to travelling around their homes and neighbourhoods rather than around the world. But there are now signs that tourist numbers are starting to recover as limitations on movement are eased.

There was a 27% rise in nights spent at EU tourist accommodation in 2021 , according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU. This took the total to 1.8 billion, although this was still 37% less than in 2019, before COVID-19.

The first global pandemic in more than 100 years, COVID-19 has spread throughout the world at an unprecedented speed. At the time of writing, 4.5 million cases have been confirmed and more than 300,000 people have died due to the virus.

As countries seek to recover, some of the more long-term economic, business, environmental, societal and technological challenges and opportunities are just beginning to become visible.

To help all stakeholders – communities, governments, businesses and individuals understand the emerging risks and follow-on effects generated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Marsh and McLennan and Zurich Insurance Group, has launched its COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications - a companion for decision-makers, building on the Forum’s annual Global Risks Report.

Companies are invited to join the Forum’s work to help manage the identified emerging risks of COVID-19 across industries to shape a better future. Read the full COVID-19 Risks Outlook: A Preliminary Mapping and its Implications report here , and our impact story with further information.

Where tourists went

Greece, Spain and Croatia saw the biggest rises in visitors last year, with the number of nights spent at tourist accommodation jumping by more than 70%. Trips to Austria, Latvia and Slovakia fell, but by less than 18%.

“This shows signs of recovery in the tourism sector,” Eurostat says.

However, when 2021 tourist night numbers are compared with 2019, it shows some countries lost more than half their bookings. Latvia, Slovakia, Malta and Hungary were the worst hit.

Denmark and the Netherlands, on the other hand, were the least affected countries. They saw drops of less than 20% in nights spent in tourist accommodation.

Eurostat says the figures are “far less dramatic” than the contrast between 2019 and 2020, when tourism in the EU halved .

Tourism supports jobs

More than 2 million businesses – mostly small and medium-sized companies – make up the EU’s tourism industry , according to the European Parliament.

These firms employ an estimated 12.3 million people, but worker numbers increase to 27.3 million when related sectors are taken into account.

Across the EU in 2018, travel and tourism made up about 4% of GDP – the total value of products and services produced in a country – or 10% if closely related sectors are taken into account.

Three-quarters of these tourism businesses operated in either accommodation or serving food and drink. Italy, France, Spain and Germany were home to 55% of the EU’s tourism firms in 2018.

Have you read?

This is how the covid-19 crisis has affected international tourism, we urgently need to kickstart tourism’s recovery but crisis offers an opportunity to rethink it, a new era of sustainable travel prepares for take-off, global growth and risks.

Tourism is the world’s third-biggest export sector , according to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), a special United Nations agency.

Because of COVID-19, tourism lost out on around $1 trillion of export revenues in 2021, UNWTO estimates. It predicts that the tourism industry will recover gradually in 2022 .

International tourist arrivals globally grew 130% in January 2022, UNWTO says. And this was despite the Omicron variant of COVID-19 slowing down the speed of the recovery.

The war in Ukraine also poses a new risk to the global tourism industry – by potentially disrupting the return of confidence to travel, UNWTO says.

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Sea lions help Fisherman's Wharf post-pandemic economy

SAN FRANCISCO - Mother Nature made humanity possible. Now, some of her furry children are making it possible for crowds of tourists to a major tourist attraction to revive itself from the post-pandemic. 

San Francisco’s Pier 39 is where sea lions are sealing the deal for merchants.

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They first showed up after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, drawing enough people to save the Fisherman’s Wharf area from the post-quake recession.

They are doing the same thing now, post-pandemic. 

"Just look at the crowds that are here today. It's been like this for days now since the news got out that we have this incredible resurgence," said Pier 39 Harbormaster Shiela Chandor.

Experts say they're here because their favorite food, anchovies, are plentiful. 

"Right now, I would say about, just over a thousand and that's fluctuated from 900 to about 1200 in the last few days," said Chador.

When sea lions are out of the water, they're called a colony. When they're in the water, they're called a raft.  Whatever, you call them, right now, this is a  "sea lion superbloom." 

"It's a fabulous gift. It's also a natural attraction. We didn't make this happen," said the harbormaster.

Drawn here by the sea lions, we met two cousins--Joanne Below of El Cerrito and Pam Davis--of England--who'd not seen each other for 35 years. 

"I think the last time I saw these seals was twenty years ago," said Below. "When I saw the sun out this morning, I thought ‘perfect thing would be the take the ferry over here to the City and hang out on the wharf.'"

"I love it. I think it's really important that we start getting a little bit more aware of the nature that's around us…People need to understand that we're just one part of this diverse population," said Davis.

The sea lions are protected by the Federal Marine Mammal Protection Act which forbids touching, feeding, or harassing them. 

"They really are funny. It's like a tempest in a teapot. You don't really see anything happening, but they're creating all this drama. And, there's crossover to human behavior, you know, sharing space and getting out of my way," Below.

This will not last much longer as many of the sea lions, especially males, will swim south to the Channel Islands for the breeding season. So, enjoy them while you can.