Life has not been normal ever since the
onset of the coronavirus pandemic and tourism has been one of the worst hit
sectors because of the same. As per the United Nation’s tourism body, global
tourism will suffer a loss of $2.0 trillion in revenue in 2021. It was revealed
on Monday that the sector’s recovery has been “fragile” and “slow”.

Travel curbs on South African nations slammed by WHO as Omicron cases rise

The World Tourism Organisation based in
Spain’s capital Madrid, made the prediction following another surge in cases in
Europe. The continent is suffering from a covid outbreak once again and a new
heavily mutated variant of the coronavirus, omicron, has been wreaking havoc
all over the globe.

International tourism is not expected to
take off and the numbers will remain 70-75 percent below
the 1.5 billion arrivals which were recorded in the pre pandemic world of Covid
19. A similar decline in numbers was observed in 2020, as per the tourism body.

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The global tourism industry incurred a loss of
over $2.0 trillion in revenues last year as per the finding of the UNWTO consequently
making it one of the worst hit sectors by the pandemic.

While it remains unclear how the sector will
perform next year given the unexpected rise and fall in coronavirus cases across
the globe. However, the medium term outlook is not encouraging.

In an official statement, the organisation
said, “Despite
the recent improvements, uneven vaccination rates around the world and new
Covid-19 strains could impact the already slow and fragile recovery,”

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UNWTO’s head Zurab Pololikashvili told AFP before
the WTO’s annual general assembly on Tuesday, “It’s a historical crisis in
the tourism industry but again tourism has the power to recover quite fast,”

Some nations in Asia took a hit of as low as 95 percent in
comparison to 2019 as many nations kept their borders shut for non-essential
travel.

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Presently, just four countries in the world
have uplifted all kinds of tourism and opened their borders completely. This
includes Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic and Mexico.