Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Tourism Industry

TASK RESEARCH

TABLE OF CONTENTS
EFFECT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON TOURISM INDUSTRY.............................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

EFFECT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON TOURISM INDUSTRY
The pandemic of COVID-19 has caused global disruption to the tourism and travel industry.
The tourism industry is one of the hardest and the first hit sectors by the pandemic of COVID-19.
The pandemic was completely bad for the businesses especially the travel and tourism industry
of UK (Baum and Hai, 2020). Before the happening of the pandemic, this industry was one of
the fastest growing sectors in UK. It was also predicted before the pandemic that the industry is
going to reach £257bn till 2025. But after the pandemic, the industry is set to lose £37bn this
year. The people who were solely depended on the tourism and travel faced the economic pain
and suffering as their livelihood was completely affected by the same (Impacts on the UK
tourism industry from COVID-19 examined, 2020). The disease which was caused by the new
strain of coronavirus which was referred as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
basically known as SARS-CoV-2 impacted the travel and tourism behaviour as compared to any
other disease till now. The tourism in UK has become the public face of COVID-19 outside the
health sphere of public (Weed, 2020). This can also be said that the tourism has contributed to
the disease and the negative effects were seen by the same because tourism let the people
connect to one another and also to go from one place to other which were the main reason for the
disease of pandemic.
Due to the pandemic and because of its global reach, the disease was tend to be controlled
by the quarantine, isolation and reduced mobility which impacted the tourism and travel greatly
(Coronavirus: UK 'could lose £60m a day' as tourism slumps, 2020). Not only tourism, but these
restrictions on the mobility has also impacted the hospitality, restaurants, travel and booking
agencies, transport, events, conventions and the attractions (Karabulut and et.al., 2020). This was
observed that the in February 2020, the monthly air passengers were almost 6,804,900 in number
which fell to almost 112,300 in April 2020 which was almost a fall of 98.3% (UK flight ban due
to new Covid strain will impact tourism in Goa: CM Sawant, 2020). The travel agency and the
accommodation businesses also faced the sharpest decline during the first national lockdown
which was almost 9.3% less in May 2020 as compared to February 2020. Also, the people of the
age group 16 to 24 faced the largest fall in the employment in the travel and tourism industries in
UK (Tourism in the UK-post covid, 2020). The government has totally restricted the tourism and
travel in any part of the world due to the pandemic of COVID-19. Before the national lockdown
was announced on 23rd March, the UK has already discouraged the unnecessary travels and on
3