Tourism Industry COVID Risk Scoreboard: Travel & Tourism Held Hostage by Coronavirus

(2 July 2021) Though travel and tourism stocks recovered to a pre-crisis level by the end of 2020, financial statement data shows that the COVID-19 pandemic continues to have a strong negative impact on the revenues of companies in the tourism industry. In Q1 2021, sales of Booking Holdings Inc., Expedia Inc. and TripAdvisor Inc. were down 60-65% compared to the same quarter a year ago. This and other data on the pandemic points to a subdued and protracted recovery for the tourism sector. The shape of that recovery will depend largely on what happens with COVID-19.

In this dashboard we have put together pandemic-related statistics for 48 countries that account for more than 70% of world tourism arrivals and departures as a resource to help users to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on international tourism flows.

• The fourth global wave of the pandemic ended in June of 2021, but as the Delta variant of virus spreads around the glob the number of new COVID-19 cases recently began to rise again in Europe, North America and Africa. Lack of effective political leadership has hampered efforts to halt the pandemic in Latin America. As of June 29, the number of new COVID-19 cases was higher than it had been a week earlier in 28 out of the 48 countries covered in this dashboard.
• The upsurges in COVID-19 cases in Dec. 2020 through Jan. 2021 and the spring of 2021 correlated with a downturn in travel and tourism stocks. 
• The stringency of international travel restrictions designed to combat the spread of disease remains at a high level in 36 out of the 48 countries. In six countries borders are closed for international travel, and 30 countries have bans on travel to/from high-risk regions. Other countries put arrivals from high-risk regions in quarantine or use screening.
• Developed countries are significantly ahead of the developing world in vaccination progress. Nevertheless, only few developed countries are close to reaching herd immunity (meaning 70% of population has been vaccinated or developed antibodies). In 16 out of the 48 countries, the number of vaccinations per hundred population is still lower than 40 — the level that seems to be required to subdue the spread of the pandemic to less than 100 new daily cases per million population per day.