— It's one of the largest industries in the world, with $5.7 trillion in revenue. It is responsible for an estimated 319 million jobs, or roughly one in 10 people working on the planet. And no sector is more at risk from the novel coronavirus.
"It's on the front line of the fallout," said Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Analytics."It's the most directly and immediately impacted.""It's vital. If you measure the entirely of the impact of travel, it is bigger than any other industry around the world. No other industry can say it supports 1 in 10 jobs," said Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, a leading research firm that follows the industry.
Canceled conferences include the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the leading show for the mobile phone industry, the Geneva Motor Show, Facebook's F8 conference, and ironically enough, the ITB Berlin, the leading trade show for the travel industry itself. It was expected to draw 160,000 participants starting Wednesday.But it's not just the big shows being canceled.
"It is fundamentally affecting the way many companies are now doing business," he said."If this turns into a global pandemic, the industry may well lose billions of dollars -- an impact that will have negative ramifications for the entire global economy."It's not just business travel. Americans who were busy making plans for spring and summer trips are also thinking twice.
"Travel globally is incredibly resilient," he said."People's desire and need to travel outweigh their concerns fairly quickly." And as those workers are forced to cut back their own spending, the impact of the slowdown will ripple through the broader economy.