The gloom was confirmed in the latest World Tourism Barometer by the World Tourism Organisation , a UN agency, released on November 28th. It is too early for the organisation to predict the effect of Omicron. Even so it reckons that international tourism in 2021 will remain far below its pre-pandemic levels, and only just above those of last year.
Both comparisons are important. Measuring the size of the industry against 2019 levels, the last time people could travel freely, shows how far it is away from normality. Comparing it with 2020, when tourism tanked, gives a sense of the speed of any recovery. Neither metric gives much comfort. The UNWTO expects international tourist arrivals in 2021 to be 70-75% below where they were in 2019. That would be no different from last year.
Data for the first three quarters of the year show that Asia is being particularly clobbered. International arrivals there were just 5% of their 2019 levels, down from 16% in 2020. Asian countries have generally been slower to loosen covid restrictions. China, the world’s second-biggest tourism market, has kept its doors locked as it. The picture is bleak in Europe too.
The coming year will probably be better, as restrictions will, with luck, continue to be eased and huge pent-up demand from the past two years is released. But China is unlikely to relax its rules in 2022, for fear of unleashing a devastating coronavirus outbreak in the year when it hosts the winter Olympics and Xi Jinping may seek another term as its leader.