Impact of COVID-19 on Tourism Industry: A Review

The outbreak of COVID-19, labeled as a black swan event, causes significant damage globally due to its fatality. The COVID-19 pandemic has expanded across the world by creating shocks in almost all the industries due to the restrictions, curfews, stay-home and work-from-home policies, and quarantines. As a result of the health and economic crisis with the COVID-19 pandemic, the tourism sector got severely affected. The UNWTO has estimated a loss of approximately 1.1 billion international tourist arrivals, with a loss of US$ 910 to 1.1 trillion export revenues and 100-120 million jobs due to the wider spread of the novel coronavirus. Therefore, this paper aims to determine the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on the tourism industry on a global scale. The study focuses on all countries in the world and discovers the challenges they confronted in tourism and the strategies to overcome those challenges in the short- and long-term while minimizing the economic shocks due to the pandemic. The researchers use a secondary source of data due to the unavailability of essential data for further statistical analysis. The significant findings highlighted the negative impact of the Virus outbreak on the tourism industry and the decline of supporting sectors such as air travel and hospitality industry in a global context. The paper illustrated the adverse effects of COVID-19 on the tourism industry with data available. The findings will help to face challenges in the tourism industry, and strategies to overcome viral infections in the future are recommended