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Tourism industry should expect 80% decline following COVID-19

International tourism could decrease by 60-80% due to COVID-19, says top experts at an event hosted by Trinity Business School.

According to panellists at the ‘Travel and Tourism in a Post Covid Society’ online event, hosted by Trinity Business School, this massive decline in international tourism could also see a 1000 billion euro loss for the industry as a direct impact of the pandemic.

It was also noted that a uniform recovery of the international tourism sector was highly unlikely due to varying numbers of cases in individual countries.

Made up of international experts, the panel also discussed the impact of COVID on tourism in Ireland, Scotland, Australia and China.

During the event, a survey was also taken, asking the audience about their views on Ireland and its tourism sector. The results showed that the majority of respondents agreed with proposal of an inbound mandatory quarantine as a proportionate response to the pandemic.

However, only around half of all respondents thought that international tourist flows would recover to 2019 levels within 2 years. Slightly less than half thought that Ireland should follow other countries and open for international tourism in June.

Professor Brian Lucey, Director of Research at Trinity Business School and Chair of the online event, says:

“The tourist industry is one of global consequence, accounting for between 5-10 GDP in most countries with in some cases up to 25%. This is too large to be allowed to wither on the vine, and countries such as Ireland and the UK which are proposing to delay international tourist opening should seriously reconsider this.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Trinity Business School .