Post COVID Travel, How will Tourism Change?
Post COVID Travel, How will Tourism Change?
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  • 승인 2022.09.14 20:04
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▲Future travel after COVID-19 / Bloomberg
▲Future travel after COVID-19 / Bloomberg

Ever since COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic, travel rates have steadily decreased and caused severe damage to the tourism industry. The prolonged pandemic affected all economic sectors, but due to the nature of tourism, it has arguably been one of the most negatively impacted sectors. 
According to the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the tourism industry’s contribution to GDP decreased by US $4.9 trillion in 2020, which is a 50.4% decline when compared with the previous year. However, as the COVID-19 situation was prolonged, in 2021, the contribution to GDP increased by US $1 trillion. In addition, while 62 million tourism related jobs were lost in 2020, 18.2 million jobs were recovered in 2021, which is an increase of approximately 6.7%. The trends here show that although travel and tourism rates dipped during the first year of the pandemic, they started to recover in 2021. 
Increased vaccination rates and pent-up demand, along with two years worth of accumulated savings, heightened the demand for travel. Wouter Geerts, a senior analyst at Skift (a travel industry news site) said he saw a strong correlation between the number of COVID-19 cases and travel rates. This was more so for Asian countries, as Asia tended to impose stricter travel regulations due to spikes in COVID-19 cases when compared with the Americas. However, as Asia’s sanctions lessened and COVID-19 neared its endemic status, the tourism industry reached a boom starting from mid 2021. Although not quite up to the standards right before COVID-19, travel rates have surged and provided some retribution for the loss the travel and tourism industry suffered. Travel and tourism was a steadily growing industry during the pre-COVID era. Although full recovery is not expected until 2024, the consensus is that travel rates will begin to rise steadily again. 
However, the travel rate is not the only part of tourism that is expected to change. Conscious travel, in which people carefully choose the journeys they go on and plan to stay away from home longer, in addition to being sensitive to their surroundings, is expected to be more popular. Mentally, the period of time when lockdown or restrictions were imposed is thought to have changed many people’s opinions about travel - instead of blindly visiting many countries and locations, it is predicted that they will be reflecting deeper on the places they want to go. The risk of virus infection is also another predicted change that people will experience, as now, they have to weigh the value of their trips with the danger of catching the COVID-19 virus. Finally, universal longing for open spaces due to the many months of cabin fever is predicted to increase. Because of the time individuals spent cooped up in their homes, time spent in the wilderness or in natural parks will be a welcome change when compared with modern urban tourist attractions. 
The impact that COVID-19 had on travel cannot be ignored, and it still might take years for travel to get back on track. However, subtle changes show that the type of travel people are looking for is altering, leaving the travel industry to target different values and beliefs about travel.