COVID pandemic has battered the travel industry worldwide and, of all the sectors, tourism has been the worst hit. While year 2021 ended on a promising note, with vaccination drives being carried out across the globe, and people going back to making travel plans. And then, the new variant of COVID, Omicron, disrupted all those plans.
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As per the reports, foreign tourist arrivals went down 63% at the end of 2021 from the pre-pandemic levels. South Asia reported worse numbers, as it has recovered only 10% of its numbers since 2019 till September of 2021, while India was 96% below its pre-pandemic numbers till June last year.
Hotel bookings also went for a toss. South Asia reported signs of recovery in October 2020, which again suffered a setback with the second wave, and reported a downward slide again in April 2021. Reports have it that while hotel bookings started picking up in July last year, and crossed the 2019 numbers in September, but then in November, Omicron was detected, and the numbers then went down again.
Regarding India, it has been witnessed that in recent years, the number of people directly and indirectly employed by the travel and tourism industry has been steadily increasing. As per a study commissioned by India’s Tourism Ministry, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) estimated that the number might be around 3.5 crore in 2019-20 which, by the third quarter of 2020, had fallen by 18 lakh. And then, the deadly second wave struck in 2021.
