Assessing the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on UK Tourism Industry

This essay examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the UK tourism industry, with a specific focus on British Airways. It details the initial shock of the pandemic, including travel restrictions and the subsequent decline in passenger numbers and revenue. The analysis covers the challenges faced by the airline, such as job losses and operational adjustments, as well as the government's response and evolving safety measures. Recommendations are provided for the industry's recovery, including focusing on fuel-efficient aircraft, avoiding complex travel restrictions, and prioritizing the most visited destinations. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of continued safety measures and workforce support to foster the resilience and sustainability of the UK travel and tourism sector.

Academic Writing for
Business Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the UK tourism industry........................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Academic writing for business management is a formal report with the utilization of
passive voice and third person. It serves a purpose to give the facts and information about the
business (Hall, 2022). This essay on “Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK tourism
industry” consists of what was the issue in Covid-19 pandemic, how the tourism industry was
impacted and the relative reaction to the worldwide crisis thereby. Then it concludes on the

summary for recommendations on the ways the impacted UK industry could recover and emerge
in the light. This essay is written with the reference of British Airways which has its headquarter
in London and is the second most biggest airline or aircraft transport and travel company. It was
established since 1974 and deals in fleet size and travel passengers. It is ranked in FTSE 100
Index and London Stock Exchange. Sean Doyle is a chairperson as well CEO of the firm.
MAIN BODY
Impact of Covid-19 pandemic on the UK tourism industry
The industry of aviation consists of small share in GDP, but more importantly it is
connected to many services and sectors. This plays a vital role in all over economic sector. Well
the government has always been targeting the travel and tourism industry for implementing
policies in the Covid-19 crisis. According to the Business Survey studies it is proved that there
were severe and different impacts of coronavirus so called Covid-19 to the travel and tourism
industries. The sales turnover has gone down for the year 2020 (Mujal-Colilles and et. al., 2022).
The level of downgrading in the tourism industry is about just triple more than the other
industries. When the coronavirus hit travel and tourism industry then the government of UK
restricted not only the internal functioning but also the external functioning of the nation. On 16th
March government banned the unimportant travelling before there was going to start a
countrywide lock-down from 23th March. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office suggested to
impose restrictions on all international travel from 17th March. The travel agencies and air crafts
have to cancel all the tickets done by the travellers and return their prepaid money through digital
payments without any charges. This lead to their fall of revenue in the business till the period of
time the lock-down will be relaxed. When it was relaxed in July the functioning of these
industries was becoming simpler gradually. The issue of Covid-19 was fearing to all the nations
as it was killing the people to death as no country in the world was having its solution. The
virus's spread was so rapid and unpreventable in the case even after many precautions were in
taken care. The pandemic was hitting over the nation in waves. It had an impact economically,
socially, mentally, physically, financially, politically and environmentally disruption over the
nation which had affected to each and every entity and being (Pawar and et. al., 2022). In the
aspect of travel and tourism industries with the relation to British Airways there is an official
study on the passenger numbers fall in domestic traffic gradually in pace. The international

flights were stopped in the peak of pandemic which was in August. As before the time
international flights were far much accordingly seasonal. The necessary import and export for the
countries were regularized by strict precaution taken under the government's guidelines and
procedures. Only licensed flights were allowed for the time to bring the FMCGs in very careful
manner so as to avoid the bad circumstances then after.
Illustration 1: Covid impact on tourism industry, 2020
The demand value of flights were gone down which lead to a lesser extent on freight
charges for the company (Panattil, George and Joy, 2022). The organisation has experienced a
tremendous and sharp fall in revenues as well as the demand and supply both were degraded
during those hard times. The workers of the company were facing financial problems in the
phase as they had no alternative sources to earn for the time they just waited for the restrictions
to be relaxed. The public were frightened from the death rate of the nation so they were avoiding
travelling unnecessarily even after the restrictions on flights were minimised. On the other side
some migrants got the opportunity to buckle back to their homes and families as they were
unconditionally affected financially and mentally so they travelled in a large bulk and some of
them couldn't afford to pay for their tickets so they prevented travelling (Zhang,Yang and Jia,
2022). The people aged 25-34 years who were engaged in British Airlines had biggest fall in
employment as the company hired and paid to them. As the company was paying some of their
employees partially for their work so the higher rates of them had to leave their jobs in order to

safe themselves from the exposing work. Even after the regulations eased then also the higher
rates of employees were on leave so as to protect themselves. The company got under fired from
the unions and the lawmakers for its preplan to cut at least 12K of their employees. As a result
the company fired 10K of their workers (British Airways says Covid-19 pandemic likely to cost
10,000 jobs, 2020). The situation was like 1 in 10 employees were hired in the airline industry.
The company was nationally responsive and responsible for the changes occurred during
pandemic lock-down. The airline was following special and complete requirements for the
necessary precautions. The matter of concern was that the people had to be responsible by their
own side during travelling. It cost around thousands of jobs to the workers of British Airlines and
the Transport Select Committee pointed that the company was taking the advantage of slashing
their payroll. This lead to dis-growth of this aviation and shut down of flights (Osipov, 2022).
Since then the company has take drastic measures to avoid the people to suffer. Still the
UK government is concerned of taking some measures for aviation industry to protect the
country, like the company doesn't the persons to travel through flight who are unvaccinated and
don't have report for RT-PCR test within 72 hours. After the situation was normalising the
government has given guidelines to secure the travel which is to be allowed only on an important
purpose. When the company saw no much growth in their revenue so the airline offered some
discounts to their passengers on booking a flight to travel. The fact was that people didn't felt
comfortable for travelling. So the company has to ensure for the important protocols to provide
them a level of comfort (Hughes, Gray and Kim, 2022). The aviation industry has two
uncertainties over their business that were cost incurred on measures for health and safety as the
operating costs were maximized for airlines as well as airports like temperature checks, viral
tests, disinfection and PPE kits. Therefore there was a gradual improvement on flights,
international travel restrictions, commercial travel, economy of UK and consumer behaviour
towards travelling after pandemic. The preventions, measures and guidelines for airline were
then preventing to return to pre crisis in nation.
Hence the recommendation for the airline is to avoid the long hauls s the passengers are
unwilling to travel across nations in without non stop travel. The company shouldn't make their
rules complex on travel restrictions so that the travellers don't get confused (Roshan and Mehta,
2022). However linking the flights will not secure the nation and passengers from Coronavirus.
So the company should be preventing their connections of flights for the most visited

destinations and cities. They should concentrate on escalating its shares in London Stock
Exchange so that they could decrease their debt burdens. Consequently there was a big
environmental advantage during the crisis so the company should focus on more fuel efficient
crafts to foster the resilience and sustainability of the travel and tourism industry. The
government is helping to the employees in need who were kicked out from their jobs of aviation.
The company should preserve competition as earlier they had a slow paced business dynamics
and productivity growth (Blume, 2022).
CONCLUSION
This essay hereby concludes with the study of impact of Covid-19 on travel and tourism
industry in the ways like what was the issue caused by the pandemic on travel industry, how it
impacted to the travel industry, the recovering journey of the sector and some recommendations
or suggestions to be adopted by the sector to emerge out from the crisis. The company should
make some measures for the employees to whom they fired before so that to increase their
workforce. The employees who got financially and mentally sick should be granted leaves and
furlough leaves. British Airways should continue its preventions, safety and health regulations in
order to grow goodwill and number of passengers to travel in their flights. This essay is specified
with the reference of British Airways.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Blume, A.W., 2022. Colonial Privilege and COVID-19. In Colonialism and the COVID-19
Pandemic (pp. 169-201). Springer, Cham.
Hall, C.M., 2022. Tourism and the capitalocene: From green growth to ecocide. Tourism
Planning & Development. 19(1). pp.61-74.
Hughes, M.C., Gray, J.A. and Kim, J., 2022. The Perspective of Administrators of Intellectual
Disability Organizations on the COVID-19 Pandemic. Journal of Intellectual
Disabilities, p.17446295211062400.
Mujal-Colilles, A. and et. al., 2022. COVID-19 impact on maritime traffic and corresponding
pollutant emissions. The case of the Port of Barcelona. Journal of Environmental
Management, p.114787.
Osipov, V.S., 2022. Post-COVID Economic Revival, Volume II. Springer.
Panattil, S.J., George, A. and Joy, M.M., 2022. A View on the Impact of Gamified Services in
the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Interdisciplinary Approach. In Handbook of
Research on Cross-Disciplinary Uses of Gamification in Organizations (pp. 105-120).
IGI Global.
Pawar, M.V. and et. al., 2022. COVID-19 Epidemic Impact on Various Society Sectors.
In Healthcare Informatics for Fighting COVID-19 and Future Epidemics (pp. 211-232).
Springer, Cham.
Roshan, A. and Mehta, P., 2022. Four-Day Workweek as Post COVID-19 Alternate Work
Arrangement: The Mediating Role of Organizational Commitment. Prabandhan: Indian
Journal of Management. 15(1). pp.8-24.
Zhang, N., Yang, S. and Jia, P., 2022. Cultivating resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic: A
socioecological perspective. Annual review of psychology. 73. pp.575-598.
Online
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19-pandemic-likely-to-cost-10-000-jobs-120091602082_1.html>