Travel

WHAT'S NEXT?: How we travel, where we travel and whether we travel at all will mean tremendous change in the decades ahead.

• [New] The International Air Transport Association (IATA) does not expect air travel to reach 2019 levels until 2023 - at the earliest.
• [New] Tourism, one of the hardest hit economic sectors, representing 10% of global GDP, may face a decline in international tourist arrivals of 58-78% during 2020, putting 100 to 120 million direct tourism jobs at risk.
• [New] The South African government foresees that domestic leisure tourism will likely only be able to resume in December and international travel next year.
• [New] For the global travel and tourism industry, employment losses are expected to top 100.2 million jobs in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Asia-Pacific market likely to see the biggest decline of approximately 63.4 million jobs.
• [New] Inbound operators looking to put business into the UK are calling on Greater Manchester's suppliers to confirm their rates for 2021 so that they can begin booking international travel for next year.
• [New] The Tourism Council of Thailand on Tuesday said it expects to see only an estimated 8 million foreign tourists in 2020, 80% down from last year, due to the impact from COVID-19 and air travel restrictions worldwide.
• [New] A fall in demand in Poland's main trading partners will likely take its toll on exports in 2020, especially in the transport and tourism sectors.
• [New] Exports are expected to drop sharply in 2020 because Hungarian exporters specialise in highly cyclical products (e.g. automotive), and in tourism and travel services which will remain constrained by physical distancing measures.
• [New] Croatia's sizeable tourism sector, accounting for the majority of services exports, is expected to remain depressed throughout 2020 and to only gradually recover in 2021, owing to remaining disruptions in international travel.
• [New] Disruptions in supply chains, the fall in domestic demand in Austria's main trading partners and the slow expected recovery in the tourism sector, put a drag on GDP growth in 2020-Q2, as exports are expected to fall more strongly than imports.
• [New] A significant decline in general travel means a big impact on luxury retailers located in airports; according to the World Tourism Organisation, there will be as many as 1.1 billion fewer international travellers in 2020 than there were last year.
• The COVID-19 outbreak has had notable impacts on the Thai economy, particularly on tourism and merchandise exports, which were in turn affected by a sharp deterioration of demand from trading partners as well as supply chain disruptions.
• Government will provide a subsidy to Fiji Airways of around $60 million to develop attractive holiday packages in partnership with the hotel industry and tourist transfer operators for the first 150,000 tourists in FY2020 - 2021.
• Tax revenues are expected to further decline in FY2020 - 2021 due to the reduction in a number of taxes to stimulate economic activity, support tourism, restore consumer and business confidence and revive domestic demand.
• Transport manufacturing linked to air and rail travel could see a significant fall in demand, on top of the difficulties associated with the need for social distancing affecting the entire supply chain.
• Google's advertising revenue is expected to drop in 2020 amid pandemics and a lull in international travel.
• CBRE foresees demand for U.S. lodging accommodations returning to pre-crisis levels in the third quarter of 2022.
• As governments continue to ban international travel and promote social distancing, the slump in air travel will hurt demand and production operations for the near future.
• While global tourism may return to previous levels in 2022, China, Indonesia, and the US stand out in optimism, with travel in China coming back to around half of the previous levels currently.
• Global tourism revenues are expected to fall by up to $3.3 trillion due to COVID-19 restrictions, with the United States standing to lose the most.
• Transport is a major and growing source of GHG emissions in Europe and historical trends in both road and air travel are not aligned with reaching -55%, let alone -65%, by 2030.
• Google's net US ad revenues will decline this year primarily because of a sharp pullback in travel advertiser spending, which in the past has been heavily concentrated on Google's search ad products.
• STR and Tourism Economics' latest projections have Beijing occupancy returning to 2019 levels by 2022, with a full rebound expected by 2023.

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Last updated: 01 August 2020