The Biggest Challenge to Tourism's Recovery in 2021
Skift Take
On the eve of a new year, albeit with vaccines on the distant horizon for most of the world, Covid's curve is nowhere near flattened around the globe. What lies ahead for the industry is clear: pushing for tourism's restart while curbing flare-ups and stop-and-start scenarios.
Covid has left a trail of pesky challenges for global tourism going into the new year, even as two vaccines begin to make their way into the world.
There’s the issue of destination marketing offices’ slashed budgets and reduced staffing. There’s the survival of cities that remains in question, with small businesses that may not survive long enough to wait for travel confidence to rise. There’s also emerging vaccine skepticism, in the same way masks we saw mask-wearing being challenged.
But as the United Nation's World Tourism Organization said last week “the restart of tourism — and the many millions of people who depend on it — cannot wait for mass vaccinations to become a reality.” Therein lies global tourism's biggest struggle ahead: how will the industry begin to recover and draw in visitors while curbing Covid and preventing the economic blowback ensuing from a stop and start scenario?
“We’re in this unusual era. It’s like the time between BC and AV — Before Covid and After Vaccine,” Brad Dean, CEO of Discover Puerto Rico, told Skift. “We’re in that in between.”
That “in between” phase has caused global destinations that were once Covid success stories to slip back into shutdowns as an inevitable result of reopening tourism ami
