COVID-19: Opportunity or threat for European tourism

Abstract

International and European tourism underwent a constant and almost unprecedented development in the last decades. In 2018, international tourism displayed the ninth year of consecutive growth that exceeded even the increase of world GDP according to UNWTO data. This ascending trend continued in 2019, and the perspectives were promising according to predictions. The beginning of 2020 brought with it the outspread of a global pandemic and one of the most sensitive industries proved to be the industry of tourism and travel. The pandemic is from this perspective an opportunity for reconsidering the criteria for ensuring sustainable tourism while it proved the frailty of the entire tourism sector. The paper presents a brief analysis of the developments in international tourism, especially regarding European tourism in the pre-pandemic context. It is based on the principles of sustainability that should govern this industry and perceive the opportunities or threats of this pandemic. Regarding the methodology, we used the main available data and discussed the current analytical prediction models, because COVID-19 has changed and will continue to change the tourism industry.

Keywords

• international tourism and travel
• sustainability
• development
• forecast change needs