Fragile and slow recovery

Global tourism is likely to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2023 at the earliest, the Secretary-General of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Zurab Pololikashvili said

PHOTO BY BELTA

“Data for the third quarter of 2021 is encouraging,” UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said. “However, arrivals are still 76 percent below pre-pandemic levels and results across the different global regions remain uneven.”
Despite recent improvements, the report warned that demand for travel could be further affected by ‘uneven vaccination rates around the world and new COVID-19 strains which had prompted new travel restrictions in some countries’.
In light of the rising cases and the emergence of new variants, he added that ‘we cannot let our guard down and need to continue our efforts to ensure equal access to vaccinations, coordinate travel procedures, make use of digital vaccination certificates to facilitate mobility, and continue to support the sector’.
The coronavirus pandemic will likely cost the global tourism sector $2 trillion in lost revenue in 2021, the UNWTO said, calling the sector’s recovery ‘fragile’ and ‘slow’. According to the latest forecast by the UN’s tourism body, the same amount was lost in 2020, making it one of the sectors hit hardest by the health crisis. In Europe, the EU Digital Covid Certificate has helped facilitate free movement within the European Union, the report added.

Based on the materials of www.tass.ru and www.news.un.org