Tourism, as volatile as resilient

Tourism is one of the most volatile among the World Big Industries.

On the A-list of the world most productive human activities, until January tourism was the third largest industry, generating 10% of the planet's gross domestic product (GDP). Remarkably, tourism’ numbers were constantly growing: whereas global GDP increases on average by 2% per year, tourism has stabilized around 7% of annual growth in recent years (+4 in 2019).

Then, the Covid19.

As volatile as it is, when a crisis of whatever nature erupts in a destination, the tourism system may temporarily collapse. And the Covid crisis makes no exceptions among the world destinations, as it hitting 188 countries and the entire global travel network.

The World Tourism Organization recently estimated that the overall impact of Covid for the January-April semester with 100% destination with travel restrictions is of about 180 million fewer international arrivals and US$195 billion lost in export revenues from international tourism. (https://webunwto.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-06/200622-Barometer-June-EN.pdf). Plus, to national governments the painful task to evaluate the drop in domestic tourism.

The picture is bleak.

The grip of Covid19 is still squeezing international tourism while in some countries at domestic level internal mobility is cautiously returning to a kind-of-normality.

The European Union pushed for internal trans-border tourism, a brave step which could enable EU member states to have a very decent summer season, under the circumstances of an ongoing pandemic.

Because tourism is as volatile as extremely resilient.

Travels are resuming in countries struggling to leave behind the peak of their crises. Covid infections are unevenly scattered around the world, the closures were asynchronous, and so are the current stages.

Those who can, feel more than ever the need to evade and are enjoying a renewed sense of freedom through traveling. But can this season be the same as before? We are forced to social distancing, and to adopt measures of cautiousness never experience before, or not at least by the living generations.

Sport tourism is not an exception, and contact sports are especially challenged.

Most outdoor sports find themselves in a privileged position.

Outdoor activities, and even more those practiced in remote, wild or natural, underpopulated areas, are definitely safer than indoor ones. Destinations are alerted that this year a differentiation of their tourism offer which would include nature based-solutions is no longer a choice, but mandatory.

Just to recall, the One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme underlines that: “Nature-based      solutions have potential to drive innovation in tourism towards sustainability and, besides mitigating   the environmental impacts of tourism activity, […] also respond well to the expectations of a growing demand for experiences in nature.” (See the whole doc.: https://webunwto.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2020-06/one-planet-vision-responsible-recovery-of-the-tourism-sector.pdf)

For those who are not familiar with the One Planet Sustainable Tourism Programme, it is a multi-stakeholder partnership led by UNWTO, with the governments of France and Spain as co-leads and in collaboration with UNEP. The programme’s scope is to make tourism more sustainable by 2030 through the development and the promotion of sustainable chains in tourism products and practices.

The floor is open not just to restore the tourism industry, but to ameliorate it.