It’s the 15th of May, and after 2 months of lockdown, the situation seems to be stable in Italy (I hope I’m not jinxing it). Now that it’s getting pretty warm outside, actually beautiful, it feels like it’s time to start thinking about vacation, right? Partly. With travel bans in place all over the world the idea of booking travel is a risky one, and I know that cause I’m going to have to cancel my trip to Japan this summer, that I bought ages ago, and as our dear leader would say…sad. Luckily I live in Italy and having a variety of places to visit here, I want to look at what tourism in Italy after Covid-19 will look like, so let’s see me try to be smart for once.
Before you check out how smart I’m gonna be, go read up on the Coronavirus Italy Updates I’ve been writing up any time something was happening.
Tourism during Covid-19 is a very difficult topic to talk about, mostly with no real agenda put in place by the governments in power around the world. We see how countries like Japan have issued a travel ban to all affected countries, and a 14-day quarantine for those visitors that have a valid reason to travel. As of today, Italy has the same rules in place for travel, obligating travelers to fill out a form and state a valid reason to enter the country. But will there be a glimmer of hope in the months to come? I really don’t know about that, and from what we’re hearing most politicians talk about, the same goes for those in power. (If this changes I will update the post, so please do come and check this out every once in awhile, cause if you can come to Italy this summer we’ve got the accommodation you need).
So how is this affecting the world? How is this total shutdown of a sector affecting local GDP? Quite harshly, If we take into account Italy, tourism is estimated to represent 13% of its GDP. If we want to look at the whole European Union we can see that Tourism affects 10% of its GDP, having one person out of ten working in the business.
I’ve also gone on to check the UNWTO’s research on the impact of Covid-19 on tourism, and the numbers are really bad, I mean I wasn’t expecting any good news. But in places like North-East & South-east Asia, there’s been a decrease of 40% for NE and 33% for SE, that’s a big chunk of money disappearing. With the worst-hit area by the tourism crisis being Macao with tourism representing 48% of its share in GDP. Not great times.
Based on calculations done by the UNWTO, if borders start to reopen by July, the tourism business will find its way back to normality in 2021, if they start to open in September or even December, well that’s gonna be a hell of a ride. (These aren’t forecasts, but just general ideas based on their past findings).
So, when will tourism in Italy after Covid-19 get back to normal? I don’t know, you don’t know, the government doesn’t know, the UNWTO doesn’t know. We’ll have to wait a bit to find out more and we’ll have to start thinking about boosting our local economy with national travel. I mean every country has its fair share of beauty, the USA is a continent, Italy is a lot smaller, but has as much to see, France, Germany, the UK, India, Spain, China, Japan. Every single country has its marvels and in the time being, we’ll have to get attuned to the country’s we live in.
But as soon as those borders re-open come over, we’re waiting
