The global tourism industry had a rosy outlook for 2020 continuing a historic rise in the industry in recent times. However, at the beginning of the year, it became apparent that COVID-19 had turned the world upside down and global tourism effectively came to a collective halt. According to latest data, the projected tourism revenue for 2020 has been slashed by almost $316B as a direct impact of the pandemic – a significant 41% decrease.

Global mobility is one of the main drivers of the pandemic and is seen as the reason as to the virus’ rapid spread across the globe. As such the first action that many governments took is to close its borders from travellers in an effort to stem the spread of the virus. The dire health situation needed drastic measures in many countries but these same measures also had massive economic implications particularly for the tourism industry.

Forecasted revenue from tourism in 2020 before the pandemic took hold was at a rosy $712B but since COVID-19 that forecast has now been slashed to $369.4B – a decrease of 41%. The new forecast is also significantly lower than 2019’s recorded revenue which was at $685B.

Europe, Asia and North America’s tourism are the most affected among the different regions. Europe’s forecast was slashed by nearly $95B – a 41.4% decrease while Asia’s forecast was slashed by 33.4% totalling over $85B.

Among individual countries, new forecasts show that Italy is expected to feel the most significant impact in terms of tourism with new projections nearly at 45% less than originally forecasted.