Countries around the world expect some of their tourist losses by encouraging others to spend cash at home.
Countries around the world expect some of their tourist losses by encouraging others to spend cash at home.
Visitors queue to enter a point on Nova Icaria beach in Barcelona on June 28.
Visitors queue to enter a point on Nova Icaria beach in Barcelona on June 28.
When the pandemic hobbled Saudi Arabia’s plans to become a global tourism hub just months after opening its borders for the first time, officials looked for the bright side.
There will be no foreign tourists in the sun on the kingdom’s beaches this summer. But there is a new market to be courted: the Saudis trapped in their homes. With countries around the world seeking some of their tourism losses through domestic travel, the government has been tackling disruption, fighting for patriotic sentiment by calling for a “Saudi summer.”
“The amount of tension other people feel, asphyxiation, is an opportunity,” Fahd Hamidaddin, ceo of the Saudi Arabian Tourism Authority, said at a video convention to announce the summer strategy.
The new coronavirus has decimated tourism, leaving a giant hole in one-tenth of the world’s economic output that the industry represents. International tourist arrivals fell by 97% in April and the World Travel and Tourism Council predicts around a hundred million losses of tasks, as productively, as border closures, fitness fears, failing hotels and airlines, and income source restrictions keep travelers at home.
But tourism hotspots will not be affected in the same way, and some primary economies, such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United Kingdom and Germany, hope to lessen the pain by capturing domestic spending going abroad.
“There is an apparent opportunity for some countries to mitigate the surprise of the loss of incoming calls by encouraging citizens to spend their holidays at home,” said David Goodger, Managing Director of Tourism and Economics for Europe and the Middle East, a unit of Oxford Economics. . “Countries with giant foreign markets that sometimes have a tourist deficit are the most productive to take advantage of this trend,” he said, while warning that any benefit will be relative.
Take Russia, whose citizens generally spend about $20 billion more each year than Russia earns on incoming trips. In the Krasnodar region, on the Black Sea coast, hotel reservations are arriving, according to Delfin, one of the largest tour operators in the region.
“June is almost a general disaster, but July will be even bigger than last year,” Said Delfin leader Sergey Romashkin.
Moscow workplace worker Anastasiya Kulagina planned to spend her summer vacation in Tuscany, spending about $6,000 for a three-week stay. Instead, the 36-year-old is contemplating Yalta in Crimea, which Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed to Ukraine in 2014. Despite the new water shortage there and the fact that the reception infrastructure of the Black Sea city dates largely from During the Cold War, Kulagina disappointed to see that the costs were almost the same as in Tuscany. But he has few other options.
In Australia, sealed borders allow some regional operators to exploit a rich and inaccessible market in the past.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Steve Hinks, who runs the Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, a five-hour drive from Sydney. He felt that the zoo, which offers a luxury camp among animals around the world, has never responded to so many requests in such a short time.
“If we seize this opportunity and “surprise ” those visitors, we have the chance to retain them in the future,” he said.
Read more: World tourism industry losses could exceed $1.2 trillion
However, in much of the world, tourists who remain closer to home will result in a loss of source of income that domestic travelers probably won’t compensate for, especially in places dependent on the source of foreign exchange income and with limited internal purchasing power. Countries such as the Maldives, where tourism accounts for more than one part of gross domestic product, or Caribbean island nations, where beaches are empty, will suffer.
According to Emre Narin, managing director of Marti Hotels and Marinas, which is indexed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange and operates six hotels and a marina in Turkey, it may take up to 3 years before the industry recovers.
About 8 million Turks traveled the country last year, compared to the 50 million foreign visitors expected this year. “Domestic tourism updates this kind of market,” Narin said.
Destinations that rely more on domestic and short-distance tourism, such as Japan, China and Mexico, will be more resilient to recession, Goodger said. As for countries with a new “national opportunity,” the UK tops its list.
But, in general, COVID-19 means that global tourism spending, whether domestic or foreign, will decline particularly in 2020, and does not expect them to return to 2019 grades until 2023. As government and task retention systems come to an end, the global can only see additional spikes in task losses, he said.
Gloria Guevara Manzo, president of the World Travel and Tourism Council, said she saw genuine winners.
“The truth is that you don’t spend the same amount on traveling in your country as abroad,” he said.
Read more: Thailand’s plan to spice up domestic tourism? Foot 40% of the hotel bill.
For Tony Lucas, who runs a kiosk in front of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Paris, “it’s a disaster.” Before the lockout, you can have a source of income of 1,000 euros depending on the day; now it’s “just” 50 euros, he says.
Similarly, in Saudi Arabia, domestication will not compensate for the suspension of devout tourism to the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina. But officials are positive about whether to convince the Saudis that there is good looks in their own country, a relatively new concept for many. In a local joke, a stranger arrives in Riyadh and asks his taxi driving force what his favorite place is. The driving force responds: “the airport”.
But non-religious tourism is so underdeveloped that there’s not much to lose. Hamidaddin said he would be pleased to attract only 5% of Saudi tourists who are usually abroad.
Among them is Faisal Almshari, 34, who moved to Europe in the summer. This year, look at the misty mountains of southern Saudi Arabia. And not just to laugh, he hopes to make the most of it.
“I was surprised,” Almshari said, describing the joy of locating summer hiking sites to expand its fledgling tourism business. “We don’t want to go abroad.”
– With Rudy Ruitenberg, Taylan Bilgic, Henry Meyer, Randy Thanthong-Knight, Michelle Jamrisko, Nasreen Seria, Michael Heath, Flavia Rotondi and Reade Pickert