Caribbean Tourism's Epic Rebound Now Faces Big Omicron Hurdle
Skift Take
The region's tourism vulnerability to the pandemic will continue to impact its full economic recovery as source markets increasingly restrict travel due to a fast spreading and little-understood Omicron variant. Now is the time for a good number of islands to double down on their lagging vaccine access and uptake.
The Caribbean region, being among the most tourism-dependent in the world, was predicted to be among the hardest hit by the pandemic’s global fallout. The World Travel & Tourism Council had projected the economic impact of Covid on the islands to result in a $42 billion loss in gross domestic product and 1.9 million jobs lost in 2020.
Those numbers from the pandemic’s first year weren't far off the mark, but the region has also recovered faster than any other part of the world in 2021. Caribbean travel and tourism's contribution to gross d
