Unemployment, H1N1 pose challenges for tourism industry
The biggest hurdles that the global tourism industry faces on its path to recovery are high unemployment and a potential worsening of the H1N1 crisis, Geoffrey Lipman, Assistant Secretary General, United Nations World Tourism Organisation said today at the Middle East Tourism Marketing Summit 2009.
Middle East: 2009-11-05 13:33:35
Overall, the global tourism industry is down 5% so far this year, but over the last month the drop-off has been 'less bad, and for 2010 it is anybody's guess,' he said.
Even though many economists are forecasting 2%-3% growth in the world economy next year, unemployment is not supposed to improve until 2011, he warned. 'If people are unemployed, businesses won't want to spend money on travel, and individuals, certainly the unemployed ones, won't want to travel,' he noted.
For now, the three bright spots in the world in terms of outbound travel are, Latin America (particularly Brazil), Africa, and China, he noted, with China being the most promising.
'China is the perhaps the big long term hope for the travel market. Even in the worst of the economic downturn China made a decision at the highest level to continue to encourage tourism travel abroad. By 2020 we estimate that China will be the biggest inbound and outbound travel market in the world,' he said.
