You all must have read several articles predicting the doom of tourism sector and staying doomed for a long period of time after this pandemic. With UNWTO announcing that international tourism will drop by 60% to 80% in 2020 and revenue losses of up to 1.2 trillion dollars the future sure looks Grim. Adding to the injury is the forecast of 25 million aviation jobs and 100 million travel and tourism jobs which are at risk.
Well nobody can deny or argue with these numbers but Tourism is a different animal altogether. I totally disagree when people say it will take a very long time for the industry to make a comeback and I will show you why...
Travelling is not just an industry it is a necessity, it is embedded in our DNA. The urge to travel motivates and pushes people into the unknown. Let's go back into history and I mean 1.7 million years back (sorry for the jet lag) HOMO ERECTUS just acquired his recent upgrades which is the ability to walk on two legs. What do you think he does next? Yes exactly he starts moving out of Africa on those two legs and ends up as Human beings at Patagonia the southernmost point of Argentina. Just think about that for a moment. Africa was the perfect place for human beings but still they travelled and risked their lives. That's the itch of travelling and exploring.
Humans have faced pandemics before and have been able to come back from it rather quickly. Coming to recent history of pandemics in 2003 the SARS sent the entire globe into panic. There was 50% drop in hotel reservations and 9.4 million international tourist arrivals were cancelled resulting in 30 to 50 billion dollars in revenue losses. It looked like a boss fight. But the tourism sector bounced back and in 2006 it contributed 5160 billion dollars to global GDP.
Although the enemy is much bigger this time but so is the will and heart of being Human. The comeback of tourism will be Epic and one for the history books.