Tag: Tourism

Health

Journey.com, AirAsia and Oyo on tourism restoration from Covid

Post author By
Post date June 17, 2021

Ramping up vaccination rates for Covid-19 will help boost the recovery in the travel and tourism industry, a panel of experts told CNBC.

Vaccination is the only comprehensive way to fight the impact of the coronavirus, Ritesh Agarwal, CEO and founder of Indian budget hotel chain start-up Oyo, told Nancy Hungerford during the virtual CNBC Evolve Global Summit on Wednesday.

Global travel and tourism took a massive hit last year and many airlines are still struggling to stay afloat. The coronavirus pandemic shut down borders and suspended most international travel. With vaccination rates picking up, especially in the West, many countries are slowly opening up their economies and borders.

“I believe travel is here to stay. Domestic travel will lead the recovery but vaccination is the only comprehensive and conclusive way of resolution,” Agarwal said.

Oyo, a SoftBank-backed start-up, saw its daily bookings for the summer season more than double in Europe where the vaccination rate is relatively high, according to the CEO.

Travelers tend to book rooms in hotels where the staff have been inoculated, he said, adding that Oyo provides certificates to show their staff have been vaccinated, Agarwal said.

Asia’s vaccination drive

Where vaccination rates are concerned, some of the more populous countries in Asia have comparatively fallen behind their counterparts in Europe and the United States.

Information collated by scientific online publication, Our World In Data, showed that as of June 15, 40% of North Americans have received at least one dose of Covid vaccine and 36% in Europe. In comparison, only 21% received at least one shot in Asia, though the pace of vaccination is picking up in the region.

AirAsia chief executive Tony Fernandes said he remains very optimistic about vaccination rates, especially in Southeast Asia.

“The distribution is there, the demand is there, and now supply is becoming consistent,” he said, adding that he expects most Southeast Asian countries to reach a vaccination rate of 60% for a first dose by September.

I believe travel is here to stay. Domestic travel will lead the recovery but vaccination is the only comprehensive and conclusive way of resolution.

Ritesh Agarwal

CEO and founder, Oyo

But he is less upbeat about the possibility of an internationally recognized vaccine passport — a digital app on a smartphone that can access an individual’s health data to confirm if they have been vaccinated against Covid-19.

Support for digital health passports is split. Critics point to concerns over how secure a person’s data will be, as third-party apps will be communicating with databases containing sensitive personal health information.

What the travel industry needs, however, is consistency around regulation, according to the budget airline boss.

Passengers crowd at Wuhan Railway Station on the first day of the Dragon Boat Festival holiday on June 12, 2021 in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China.

Zhao Jun | Visual China Group | Getty Images

“If you have got two vaccines, you don’t need to quarantine. That seems to vary country to country,” he said. Nations should also accept all vaccines that have been approved by the World Health Organization, Fernandes added.

Major trends among travelers

Domestic travel is already picking up in countries like China that have brought the pandemic under relatively good control. Cases have remained comparatively low while the vaccination rate climbed.

Millions of people rushed to travel last month during a five-day Labor Day holiday in the country as bookings for hotels, car rentals and other travel soared.

Jane Sun, CEO of Chinese travel booking site Trip.com, said that she is looking forward to a strong rebound for domestic travel in China. “We have seen strong pent-up demand through the data of our search volume,” she said.

Sun explained there are three trends being observed among those who are traveling again since the start of the pandemic.

First, they are booking more with hotels, airlines and local operators who are providing masks, hand sanitizers and other safety measures. Second, people are now traveling in much smaller groups. Finally, they are choosing packages with flexibility, that allow them to change, cancel or postpone their trips.

AirAsia’s Fernandes agreed that the current situation required operators, including the low-cost carriers, to adapt and offer more flexibility to travelers — even if it may not be a sound business decision.

“There’s too much uncertainty,” he said, adding that the airline may bring back some of its older, more strict policies once there is more certainty in travel.

Tags AirAsia, Covid, Oyo, recovery, Tourism, Tripcom

Health

Vaccine journey offers? Russia plans packages to revive tourism business

Post author By
Post date June 8, 2021

Tourists walk along Red Square in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow on November 6, 2020.

ALEXANDER NEMENOV | AFP | Getty Images

With Russia’s coronavirus shot Sputnik V sluggishly received among its own citizens, Russia is considering launching travel packages for Covid vaccinations for tourists.

Russian state news agency Tass quoted one of the country’s tourism industry leaders as saying that “vaccination prices” were ready, but that visas and entry requirements for foreign visitors were holding them back.

“The product is ready, but the issues of visa support and legal entry for foreigners who want to get the Russian vaccine have yet to be resolved,” Andrei Ignatyev, president of the Russian Union of Travel Industry (RUTI), told Tass.

The price of a three-week vaccination rate for foreigners will be anywhere from $ 1,500 to $ 2,500, excluding the airline’s expense, Ignatyev added.

Vaccine prices seem to have the blessing of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Speaking at the International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in St. Petersburg last week, Putin asked the government to examine the possibility of offering paid Covid vaccinations to foreign visitors to Russia.

Russia is keen to revitalize its tourism industry to end the Covid pandemic. Like other countries around the world, last March Russia introduced entry restrictions for almost all foreigners (with the exception of some workers), bringing tourism to a standstill. Since then, entry restrictions have been relaxed if visitors present negative Covid tests before traveling.

Immunization tourism could prove popular for people in countries struggling to get their own immunization programs off the ground. The Times of India reported last month that a Delhi-based travel agent was offering a 24-day package tour to Russia that included two shots of the Sputnik-V vaccine and a 21-day interval to allow sightseeing between vaccinations.

Slow domestic recording

Russia was the first country in the world to approve a coronavirus vaccine – its own Sputnik V – last August, but despite its rapid approval and rollout, domestic uptake of vaccination has been sluggish.

According to data compiled by Our World In Data, only 9% of the adult population are fully vaccinated so far, placing Russia behind Brazil, India, Turkey and Mexico in terms of vaccination progress.

Target market

In Europe, according to Our World In Data, over 23% of adults are now fully vaccinated. Russia will therefore look for potential vaccination tourists in the distance, said Ignatiev.

“The countries of Africa and Latin America have shown great interest in such a tourist product throughout the vaccination campaign in Russia, and RUTI has received such inquiries,” he added, according to Tass.

In late May, President Putin announced Russia would not make Covid vaccines compulsory for its citizens and said people should recognize the need to vaccinate for themselves. He also stressed that the vaccine was safe; According to peer-reviewed results from its late-stage clinical study published in February in the medical journal The Lancet, Sputnik V was found to be 91.6% effective in preventing the development of Covid-19.

“I would like to emphasize again and appeal to all of our citizens: think carefully, remember that the Russian vaccine – practice has already shown that millions (of people) have used it – is currently the most reliable and safest. ” “Said Putin. “In our country, all the conditions for a vaccination are in place.”

A poll published in March by the Russian electoral center Levada found that 62% of people did not want to receive the vaccine, with the greatest reluctance noted among 18-24 year olds.

Tags Deals, industry, packages, plans, Revive, Russia, Tourism, travel, Vaccine

Business

Eire’s tourism commerce prepares to re-open for good

Post author By
Post date May 11, 2021

Ireland's tourism trade prepares to re-open for good

Bruce Yuanyue Bi | The image database | Getty Images

DUBLIN – When Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin announced the gradual reopening of the hospitality industry in June, hotel managers like Niall Coffey breathed a sigh of relief.

Ireland’s tourism and hospitality industries were hardest hit during the pandemic, and previous attempts to reopen have been weighed down by new waves of Covid-19.

“I think we have no choice but to stay open at this stage because financially we really need to do this,” said Coffey, general manager of Harvey’s Point, a four-star hotel in Donegal, North West Ireland.

Apart from brief reopenings last summer and Christmas, bars, restaurants and hotels have largely been closed since March 2020.

Now that the vaccination campaign is gathering pace, Coffey and others are preparing for June 2nd when they can start letting some guests through the doors again. Bars and restaurants can then be opened in the following weeks, albeit with restrictions on the number and guidelines for indoor and outdoor meals.

Des O’Dowd, owner of Inchydoney Island Lodge & Spa in Cork, said companies have incurred a great deal of expense over the past year trying to reopen safely.

“They are trying to return groceries to vendors. We closed twice, going through fruits and vegetables and throwing them away or trying to find a home for them. We were closed and the beer ran out,” he told CNBC.

“It’s an expensive process to start and stop and do it all over again now would be heartbreaking. I hope that is the case, that we open up and there is no going back.”

The government has now recognized that the hospitality and tourism industries, a major employer in Ireland, will need further support even after the restrictions are lifted. Tourism was valued at around 9.3 billion euros ($ 11.3 billion) for the Irish economy in 2019, with 2 billion euros in tourism-related taxes paid to the treasury.

Food and supplies aside, many hotels and bars have had to invest in renovations and equipment to ensure compliance with Covid guidelines.

“This time last year we really faced a stranger. We were trying to measure six feet with tape measure and we had to buy a lot of partitions between the tables,” said O’Dowd.

Now, he said the hotel has a better understanding of what a safe reopening looks like, including providing antigen testing to the hotel’s 225 employees, adding to the cost of reopening and staying open.

Domestic visitors

Hotel managers and tourism industry workers hope the general public will share their enthusiasm for the reopening.

With international travel still effectively ceased, the country’s tourism industry relies on domestic visitors and “stays” during the summer months, but this will only last so long.

Coffey said he could not rely solely on domestic visitors for an extended period of time and that U.S. visitors are usually a major market group for his business.

“The golf business would have been pretty good for us in the summer season when we can get high rates (prepandemic). That’s gone,” he said.

He added that the hotel has had some bookings for September and October from American guests who are optimistic that international travel will reopen soon.

That could still come to fruition. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at the end of April that the EU would allow fully vaccinated US visitors to enter the block.

“It’s great to see Europe talking about opening up and Britain is a little ahead of us. I think that’s a big advantage for us that we can see in the real world what happens a few weeks ahead of us,” said O. ‘Dowd added.

“Hopefully, in the UK and wherever these things are tested, very positive things will happen and we will get good results.”

International tourism

Niall Gibbons, executive director of the government agency Tourism Ireland, said the planned EU digital green certificate – or vaccination cards in a few quarters – is a step in the right direction to make international travel possible again.

Tourism Ireland is a joint government agency between Ireland and Northern Ireland whose job it is to promote the island of Ireland to overseas visitors.

According to the group, overseas tourist spending in Ireland in 2019 was 5.8 billion euros ($ 7 billion), with 325,000 people employed in the sector. It is therefore important to reopen the country in the second half of the year.

The EU certificate would allow visitors from other countries to check their vaccination or negative test status upon arrival in an EU country.

“There are other factors that will be required before the international (travel) restart gets underway. First and foremost, we need to work with the government on a roadmap,” Gibbons told CNBC.

Photo taken in Ireland, Cork

Francis Gormezano / EyeEm | EyeEm | Getty Images

“There are factors such as the mandatory hotel quarantine, the applicable test regime, air connectivity and restarting.”

Ireland introduced mandatory hotel quarantine earlier this year, which requires people entering the country from certain locations to be quarantined in a hotel for two weeks. The system presents a number of challenges.

“Quarantine and tourism don’t go hand in hand,” Gibbons said. He added that he supports a plan similar to the EU traffic light system in place last year, indicating which countries have lower infection rates and travel safer.

“Ultimately, this is the place we all want to be across the European Union,” he said.

Tags Good, Irelands, prepares, Reopen, Tourism, Trade

World News

Phuket Was Poised for Tourism Comeback. A Covid Surge Dashed These Hopes.

Post author By
Post date April 25, 2021

Phuket Was Poised for Tourism Comeback. A Covid Surge Dashed Those Hopes.

PHUKET, Thailand – Around the corner from the teeth whitening clinic and tattoo parlor with offerings in Russian, Hebrew and Chinese, near the al fresco restaurant with indifferent fried rice that cheers sunburned tourists or tired go-go dancers is supposed to, the Hooters sign has lost its H.

The sign in this distinctive orange comic font is now simply “ooters”.

Like so much on Patong Beach, the shabby epicenter of sybaritic Thailand, Hooters is “temporarily closed”. Other facilities around the beach on Phuket Island are more tightly closed, their metal grilles and padlocks rusted, or their contents ripped out except for the fittings, leaving only the carcasses of a tourism industry ravaged by the coronavirus epidemic.

The sun, which typically draws 15 million people to Phuket each year, remains unforgiving in a downturn. The rays bleach the “For Rent” signs on remote villas and the scorching greens on neglected golf courses. They exposed the emptiness of the streets of Patong, where tuk-tuk drivers once roamed and served as giveaways for snorkeling trips, peep shows or Thai massages.

Just a few weeks ago, Phuket seemed ready for a comeback. After a year with virtually no foreign tourists coming to Thailand, the national government decided that Phuket would welcome vaccinated visitors from July without the need to quarantine them. The project was called Phuket Sandbox.

But Thailand is now hit by its worst Covid-19 outbreak since the pandemic began, spread in part by well-heeled Thais who partied in Phuket and Bangkok with no social distancing. The confirmed daily number of cases – albeit low by global standards – has risen from 26 on April 1 to more than 2,000 three weeks later, in a country that saw a total of around 4,000 cases in early December.

For months, Thailand’s strict quarantines, lockdowns, border surveillance and strict use of masks kept the virus in check, despite the economy suffering. But even as the past few weeks have seen repeated daily highs in the case load, the Thai government is reacting slowly.

In early April, when cases were increasing, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha responded with a verbal shrug.

“Whatever happens, happens,” he said.

Desperate to revitalize its tourism sector, Phuket, which closed its airport during a spike in covid last year, allowed people to continue domestic flights this spring even if cases hit record highs. It was only on Thursday that local authorities requested Covid-19 screening for those arriving on the island.

“If you ask me how optimistic I am, I can’t tell,” said Nanthasiri Ronnasiri, director of the Phuket Tourism Bureau. “The situation is constantly changing.”

What You Need To Know About The Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Break In The United States

- On April 23, an advisory panel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted to lift a hiatus on Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine and put a label on an extremely rare but potentially dangerous bleeding disorder.
- Federal health officials are expected to officially recommend states lift the hiatus.
- The vaccine was recently discontinued after reports of a rare bleeding disorder surfaced in six women who received the vaccine.
- The overall risk of developing the disorder is extremely small. Women between the ages of 30 and 39 appear to be most at risk, with 11.8 cases per million doses. There were seven cases per million doses in women between 18 and 49 years of age.
- Almost eight million doses of the vaccine have now been given. There was less than one case per million doses in men and women aged 50 and over.
- Johnson & Johnson had also decided to postpone the launch of its vaccine in Europe for similar reasons, but later decided to continue its campaign after the European Union Medicines Agency announced the addition of a warning. South Africa, devastated by a contagious variant of the virus, also stopped using the vaccine, but later continued to use it.

On April 18, Thailand’s tourism minister admitted that an opening for Phuket on July 1 appears unlikely as the plan is contingent on Covid being suppressed in Thailand.

To prepare for the Phuket sandbox, the Thai government sent many of their limited vaccines to the island in hopes of herd immunity by the summer. By mid-April, more than 20 percent of Phuket residents had been vaccinated. Nationwide, only about 1 percent of the population received the required doses.

“I’m very relieved,” said Suttirak Chaisawat, a grocer who received his Sinovac vaccine this month at a resort that was being repurposed for mass vaccination. “We all need hope for Phuket.”

While the vaccinations may have given Mr. Suttirak some optimism, the current picture remains grim.

Usually the golden sands of Patong Beach are full of foreign vacationers at this time of year.

But the beach is now almost deserted, except for a group of residents who line up for Covid tests in a mobile medical unit. Up the street a monitor lizard, a creature more crocodile than newt, was trampling across the asphalt, and little traffic obstructed the crossing.

Phuket’s half-built condominium complexes are being reclaimed by nature, always a battle in the tropics but a lost cause when developers’ money runs dry. Billboards for “Exclusive Dream Holiday Home” are stained with mold and monsoon mud.

Updated

April 24, 2021, 10:42 p.m. ET

This month’s Thai New Year period should be a dress rehearsal for Phuket’s revival. Instead of foreign backpackers or attendees at business conferences, the hotels sought to attract high-end Thai tourists who, without the pandemic, might have decamped overseas skiing in Hokkaido, Japan, or shopping in Paris.

But rather than preparing the island for its return as a global tourist haven, the Thai New Year may have ruined the island’s chances of reopening in July.

At festivals in Patong and other beaches this month, thousands of wealthy Thais partied, fewer masks than bikini tops. For some in Thailand’s high society, Covid was viewed as something that could infect vegetable vendors or shrimp peelers, not the jet set.

But then these beach buddies started testing positive and the virus spread to Phuket from luxury Bangkok nightclubs.

The resurgence of the virus after so many months of economic hardship is harrowing for the majority of Phuket residents who depend on foreign tourists for their livelihoods.

When a 3-year-old elephant was chewing on sugar cane nearby, Jaturaphit Jandarot was slowly swinging in his hammock. There was little else to do.

Before the pandemic, he and the other elephant handlers on the outskirts of Patong took more than 100 tourists, mainly from China, on 30-minute drives every day. There are no visitors now.

“I was very excited to hear that they are going to open Phuket to foreign tourists,” said Jaturaphit. “Thais don’t ride elephants.”

Regardless of the level of international travel, the elephants still need to be fed. Every month a dozen animals consume sugar cane, pineapples, and bananas worth at least $ 2,000. The 3-year-old, hardly more than a toddler in the elephant years, eats as much as the adults.

After the tin and rubber industries declined in Phuket, tourism grew from a few bungalows on Patong Beach in the 1970s to a global phenomenon that attracted golfers, clubbers, yachers, sex tourists, and Scandinavian snowbirds.

Much of the high-end accommodation in Phuket is near the beach town of Bang Tao, a quiet Muslim-majority community where posters for upscale wine bars mix with Arabic signs for Islamic schools.

Phuket’s largest mosque is in Bang Tao, and this year the first day of Ramadan coincided with the start of the Thai New Year celebrations, a promising augur after a year of economic hardship. The night before the fast began, worshipers flocked to the mosque. Women chopped shrimp, banana blossoms and armfuls of herbs for the upcoming feast.

But at the last minute, Phuket authorities canceled mass prayers fearing the virus would spread. Iftar, the breaking of the fast, takes place in houses, not in the mosque.

When local authorities attributed Covid-19 cases on the island to the upscale beach parties, Bang Tao residents became frustrated.

“We want to welcome people to Phuket, of course, but if they don’t protect themselves and bring Covid here, I’m a little angry,” said Huda Panan, an elementary school teacher who lives behind the mosque.

Ms. Huda’s husband is a taxi driver but has not worked for over a year. Most of the mosque community was dependent on tourism and worked as a concierge, cleaner, landscaper and water sports guide. Now some locals are selling dried fish and cleaning the hills for fruit that is used to add wrinkles to a local curry – whatever they can do to survive.

Occasionally, Buddhist temples, churches and mosques in Phuket distribute meals to the hungry. The lines are long. The food is running out.

“We can wait a little longer for Phuket to get better,” Ms. Huda said in the heat of the day when the daily fast became long. “But not much more.”

Muktita Suhartono contributed to coverage from Bangkok.

Tags Comeback, Covid, Dashed, hopes, Phuket, Poised, surge, Tourism

Health

the right way to reopen tourism this summer season

Post author By
Post date March 18, 2021

This photo illustration shows a French passport and an international vaccination or prophylactic certificate in front of the Berlaymont, the headquarters of the EU Commission, on March 13, 2021 in Brussels, Belgium.

Thierry Monasse | Getty Images

LONDON – The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, proposed a vaccination certificate for citizens on Wednesday to support tourism-related activities this summer.

Tourism-dependent economies like Greece have pushed for a common EU system that would restore some travel to the region this summer. These countries struggled with fewer visitors in 2020 and want to welcome people back to avoid more serious economic scars.

As a result, the Commission proposed that EU citizens be allowed to use a “digital green certificate” to prove that they have been vaccinated against the virus. that they received a negative Covid-19 test; or they have recovered after contracting the coronavirus.

The idea with the other two options in addition to vaccination is to avoid criticism that the document discriminates against those who have not yet received a shot. However, some nations, including France, are concerned about the idea as young people will be the last to receive a vaccine.

At a press conference on Wednesday, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said: “The certificate ensures that the results, the data it contains, the data and the minimum data set are mutually recognized in each Member State.”

“We want to help Member States restore free movement in a safe, responsible and trustworthy way,” she added.

In addition, a vaccine certificate is a difficult pill for some EU countries given the region’s free movement policy. Until the coronavirus emerged and in most cases European citizens were able to move from one country to another without passport control.

The European Commission also said on Wednesday that all vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency should be automatically recognized by other member states under this new system. However, countries that wished to do so could also recognize vaccines that have not yet been approved by the European regulator.

Hungary, for example, vaccinates its citizens with the Russian vaccine Sputnik V and the shot from China. These have not yet been approved by the EMA.

The document is expected to contain only one very specific record: the citizen’s name and date of birth, the date the certificate was issued, relevant information about a vaccine, test or recovery, and a unique identification name.

“This cannot be maintained by the countries visited,” the Commission said in a statement on Wednesday.

The Brussels-based institution also stated that the certificate will be available free of charge in the language of the issuing country as well as in English and that it is only a temporary mechanism.

“It will be suspended as soon as the World Health Organization declares the end of the international health emergency Covid-19,” says a Commission document.

Wednesday’s proposal will be discussed at the next European summit later this month. In February, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said that the introduction of a digital certificate could take three months.

The various EU countries and the European Parliament must approve the Commission’s proposal before it can be implemented.

Tags Reopen, Summer, Tourism

World News

Covid-19 Dwell Information Updates: Vaccine Eligibility, Variants and Tourism

Post author By
Post date March 17, 2021

An empty Montmartre district in Paris last April. The European Union hopes to restore the summer tourism market this year.

Here’s what you need to know:

Credit…Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times

The European Union proposed a Covid-19 certificate on Wednesday that would allow people to travel more freely, a move aimed at saving the summer tourist season for member states that depend on it economically.

The proposed document, known as a Digital Green Certificate, would allow residents of member nations to travel at will within the bloc if they have proof of Covid-19 vaccination, a negative test result or a documented recovery from the coronavirus.

The certificates would be free and would be available in digital or paper format.

“The Digital Green Certificate will not be a precondition to free movement, and it will not discriminate in any way,” said Didier Reynders, the bloc’s top official for justice, adding that the aim was to “gradually restore free movement within the E.U. and avoid fragmentation.”

Freedom of movement is a cornerstone of the bloc, but travel restrictions are traditionally under the purview of national governments. The commission’s plan is a bid to coordinate what has become a patchwork of national measures that are hindering travel within the bloc.

Under the proposed rules, national governments could decide which travel restrictions, such as obligatory quarantine, would be lifted for certificate holders.

The proposals, which require approval by the European Parliament and the majority of member states, come as many European countries are experiencing a third wave of infections and an inoculation effort that has been slowed by doubts over AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine. Several countries have suspended use of the vaccine at least temporarily, confusing citizens and possibly increasing resistance to vaccinations.

The hope is to make the certificates operational by mid-June in order to salvage the summer season.

Just under 10 percent of European Union residents have been vaccinated, leaving the bloc far behind Britain and the United States.

As the European Union was offering its proposal to allow greater freedom of movement, Kwasi Kwarteng, the British business secretary, said the government was continuing to look at ways that would allow people to travel.

“We are having conversations all the time about what the next steps should be,” he told the BBC, adding that the government was stressing on the importance of allowing people to travel safely.

An earlier version of this item misstated where the Digital Green Certificate would be valid. The document would be used for travel in all European Union member countries, not in all countries of the border-free Schengen area, which excludes some E.U. members and includes some nonmembers.

United States ›	United StatesOn March 16	14-day change
New cases	54,440	–16%
New deaths	1,245	–35%

World ›	WorldOn March 16	14-day change
New cases	456,093	+15%
New deaths	9,988	–5%

U.S. vaccinations ›

Credit…Rory Doyle for The New York Times

Not long ago, Covid-19 vaccines were available only to the most vulnerable Americans and some essential workers. That is quickly changing as vaccine production and distribution ramp up and more states begin to heed a call from President Biden to expand access to all adults by May.

States are also racing to stay ahead of the growing number of virus variants, some of which are more contagious and possibly even more deadly. At least three states — Maine, Virginia and Wisconsin — and Washington, D.C., have said that they will expand eligibility to their general population by May 1, the deadline that Mr. Biden set last week. Other states — including Colorado, Connecticut, Ohio, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana and Utah — hope to do so this month or next.

In Mississippi and Alaska, everyone age 16 or older is eligible, and Arizona and Michigan have made the vaccines available to all adults in some counties.

Mr. Biden said last week that he was directing the federal government to secure an additional 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. With three vaccines now in use, Mr. Biden has said that the United States will have secured enough doses by the end of May for shots to be available for all adults.

Eligible only in some counties

Several states have already been expanding eligibility for vaccinations. In Ohio, vaccines will open to anyone 40 and up as of Friday, and to more residents with certain medical conditions. Indiana extended access to people 45 and older, effective immediately.

In Massachusetts, residents 60 years and older, as well as people who work in small spaces and those whose work requires regular public interaction, will be eligible for a vaccine on March 22, the state announced Wednesday. Residents 55 and older with certain medical conditions will be eligible on April 5, and everyone else 16 years and older will be eligible on April 19.

Coloradans age 50 and up will be eligible for a shot on Friday, along with anyone 16 years and older with certain medical conditions. Wisconsin said on Tuesday that residents 16 years and up with certain medical conditions would be eligible a week earlier than initially planned.

On Monday, Texans age 50 and older and Georgians over 55 became eligible for vaccines.

In New York State, residents 60 and older are eligible to receive a vaccine, and more frontline workers became eligible on Wednesday, including government employees, building services workers and employees of nonprofit groups.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has yet to announce how or when the state will expand eligibility to all adults. On Wednesday, Mr. Cuomo, 63, received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine at a church in Harlem, which he framed as an effort to boost vaccination rates among the state’s Black communities.

Since vaccinations began in December, the federal government has delivered nearly 143 million vaccine doses to states and territories, and more than 77 percent have been administered, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The country is averaging about 2.4 million shots a day, compared with well under one million a day in January.

As of Tuesday, 65 percent of the country’s older population had received at least one vaccine dose, according to C.D.C. data, with 37 percent fully vaccinated.

Credit…Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times

The World Health Organization and the head of the European Commission urged European countries to use the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine and expressed confidence that it was safe, as investigations continue into unusual cases of side effects that led several countries to pause administering the shots.

The head of the W.H.O.’s vaccines department, Dr. Kate O’Brien, said cases of blood clots reported among millions of Europeans who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine were rare. And, she said, it was not unusual that some of those vaccinated should suffer blood clots resulting from other health conditions. No causative link has yet emerged between the vaccine and blood clots or severe bleeding.

“At this point the benefit-risk assessment is to continue with vaccination,” Dr. O’Brien said, repeating the responses both organizations have offered as some member countries have paused administering doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine following some reports of fatal brain hemorrhaging, blood clots and unusual bleeding in a handful of people who received it.

The European Union’s top drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency, is expected to give its assessment of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Thursday. It has so far also pushed back against concerns about the shot, saying there was no sign that it caused dangerous problems. On Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, said, “I trust AstraZeneca, I trust the vaccines.” She added that she was “convinced that the statement will clarify the situation.”

Germany, France, Italy and Spain are the prominent European countries to recently halt their rollouts of the AstraZeneca shots this week. More than a dozen countries have either partly or fully suspended the vaccine’s use while the cases are investigated. Most of the countries said they were doing so as a precaution until leading health agencies could review the cases.

Even if experts ultimately conclude there may be an association between the blood clots and the vaccine “these are very rare events,” Dr. O’Brien said.

Blood clots, thick blobs of blood that can block circulation, form in response to injuries and can also be caused by many illnesses, including cancer and genetic disorders, certain drugs and prolonged sitting or bed rest. If a blood clot travels to the brain, it can be deadly.

The suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine in some countries comes at a time when the region is facing a third wave of the virus and further slows Europe’s vaccination campaign, already lagging because of shortages. No E.U. country is currently on pace to vaccinate 70 percent of its population by September.

Ms. von der Leyen said Europe’s vaccination campaign would pick up speed, with 55 million doses of the newly approved Johnson & Johnson vaccine, 200 million of the Pfizer vaccine, 35 million of the Moderna vaccine, and 70 million of AstraZeneca expected in the coming months.

Credit…Laura Boushnak for The New York Times

Stained for years by its brutal role in the horrific Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, Serbia is now basking in the glow of success in a good campaign: the quest to get its people vaccinated.

Serbia has raced ahead of the far richer and usually better-organized countries in Europe to offer all adult citizens not only free inoculations, but also a smorgasbord of five vaccines to choose from.

The country’s unusual surfeit of vaccines has been a public relations triumph for the increasingly authoritarian government of President Aleksandar Vucic. It has burnished his own and his country’s image, weakened his already beleaguered opponents and added a new twist to the complex geopolitics of vaccines.

Serbia, with a population under seven million, placed bets across the board, sealing initial deals for more than 11 million doses with Russia and China, whose products have not been approved by European regulators, as well as with Western drug companies.

It reached its first vaccine deal, covering 2.2 million doses, with Pfizer in August and quickly followed up with contracts for millions more from Russia and China.

As a result, Serbia has become the best vaccinator in Europe after Britain, data collected by OurWorldInData shows. It had administered 29.5 doses for every 100 people as of last week compared with just 10.5 in Germany, a country long viewed as a model of efficiency and good governance, and 10.7 in France.

Serbia’s prime minister, Ana Brnabic, attributed her country’s success to its decision to “treat this as a health issue, not a political issue. We negotiated with all, regardless of whether East or West.”

Serbia’s readiness to embrace non-Western vaccines so far shunned by the European Union could backfire if they turn out to be duds. Sinopharm, unlike Western vaccine makers, has not published detailed data from Phase 3 trials. Data it has released suggest that its product is less effective than Western coronavirus vaccines.

Many Serbians, apparently reassured by the vaccination drive, have also lowered their guard against the risk of infection. The daily number of new cases has more than doubled since early February, prompting the government to order all businesses other than food stores and pharmacies to close last weekend.

Credit…Friedemann Vogel/EPA, via Shutterstock

After a tough year of toggling between remote and in-person schooling, many students, teachers and their families feel burned out from pandemic learning. But companies that market digital learning tools to schools are enjoying a windfall.

Venture and equity financing for education technology start-ups has more than doubled, surging to $12.6 billion worldwide last year from $4.8 billion in 2019, according to a report from CB Insights, a firm that tracks start-ups and venture capital.

Yet as more districts reopen for in-person instruction, the billions of dollars that schools and venture capitalists have sunk into education technology are about to get tested.

“There’s definitely going to be a shakeout over the next year,” said Matthew Gross, the chief executive of Newsela, a popular reading lesson app for schools.

A number of ed-tech start-ups reporting record growth had sizable school audiences before the pandemic. Then last spring, as school districts switched to remote learning, many education apps hit on a common pandemic growth strategy: They temporarily made their premium services free to teachers for the rest of the school year.

“What unfolded from there was massive adoption,” said Tory Patterson, a managing director at Owl Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in education start-ups like Newsela. Once the school year ended, he said, ed-tech start-ups began trying to convert school districts into paying customers, and “we saw pretty broad-based uptake of those offers.”

Some consumer tech giants that provided free services to schools also reaped benefits, gaining audience share and getting millions of students accustomed to using their product.

The worldwide audience for Google Classroom, Google’s free class assignment and grading app, has skyrocketed to more than 150 million students and educators, up from 40 million early last year. And Zoom Video Communications says it has provided free services during the pandemic to more than 125,000 schools in 25 countries.

Whether tools that teachers have come to rely on for remote learning can maintain their popularity will now hinge on how useful the apps are in the classroom.

Credit…Nasser Nasser/Associated Press

JERUSALEM — The occupied West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip received their first shipment of Covid-19 vaccines on Wednesday from the global vaccine sharing initiative Covax, paving the way for Palestinian authorities to start inoculating residents on a wider scale.

The Health Ministry of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority said the vaccines would be administered starting Sunday to medical teams, dialysis and cancer patients, and people who are 75 or older.

The ministry said the shipment included 37,440 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which will be used right away; and 24,000 doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, which it initially said would be stored until the World Health Organization issued a scientific opinion on the vaccine’s safety.

Later Wednesday, after the W.H.O. recommended the continued use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the Palestinian health minister, Mai al-Kaila, said the Palestinians would follow that recommendation.

Tor Wennesland, the top United Nations envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, called the shipment “a key step in our fight against #Covid19 in the #WestBank & #Gaza.”

The West Bank now faces what Palestinian officials have called the most challenging public health situation since the pandemic first emerged in the territory last year. Occupancy in coronavirus wards has surged, and the authorities have announced a “comprehensive lockdown” between Monday and Saturday. An average of 1,767 new coronavirus cases have been recorded daily over the past week, according to official figures.

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank said that before Wednesday, it had received only 12,000 vaccine doses. Officials in Gaza said they had received a total of 62,000 doses, including 2,000 from the Palestinian Authority and 60,000 from the United Arab Emirates.

Israeli security officials said that about 20,000 of the doses that arrived from Covax on Wednesday went to Gaza.

Israel has faced criticism for providing Israeli citizens with significantly greater access to vaccines than it has allowed for Palestinians living under its occupation.

Last week, Israel started inoculating tens of thousands of Palestinians who have permits to work in Israel or in Jewish settlements — the first substantial amount of vaccine it has made available to Palestinians living in the West Bank.

GLOBAL ROUNDUP

Credit…Sem Van Der Wal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

As Dutch voters go to the polls for parliamentary elections this week, the pandemic has changed the usual dynamic.

To help maintain social distancing, the voting process was spread over three days, ending on Wednesday. Voters over 70 were encouraged to vote by mail. And campaigning mainly took place on television, making it hard for voters to spontaneously confront politicians as is typical practice.

Coronavirus cases are again surging in the Netherlands, prompting the authorities to warn of a third wave. Last year, it took the government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte until November to get the country’s testing capabilities in order, and the vaccination process is also going slowly.

Yet during the campaigning, more localized issues managed to overshadow the government’s handling of the coronavirus.

The prime minister and his cabinet resigned in January over a scandal involving the tax authorities’ hunting down people, mostly poor, who had made administrative mistakes in their child benefits requests. Many were brought to financial ruin as a result.

Broader policies put forward by Mr. Rutte, who has been in power since 2010, were also a focus on the campaign trail. While his party is ahead in the polls, it has lost some support in recent weeks.

Neighboring Germany is also entering a packed election season, with national and state votes coming in a year that will bring to an end the 16-year chancellorship of Angela Merkel.

In other developments around the world:

Australia will send 8,000 coronavirus vaccine doses to Papua New Guinea in an attempt to curb a rapidly growing outbreak in the country, which is Australia’s closest neighbor, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Wednesday. Australia will also ask AstraZeneca to divert to the small island nation a million vaccine doses that were bound for Australia. And it is suspending all charter flights from Papua New Guinea, where about half of the nation’s total reported 2,351 coronavirus cases have been recorded in the past two weeks.

Credit…Stephen Speranza for The New York Times

When the pandemic narrowed the world, Jonathan Hirshon stopped traveling, eating out, going to cocktail parties and commuting to the office.

What a relief.

Mr. Hirshon experiences severe social anxiety. Even as he grieved the pandemic’s toll, he found lockdown life to be a respite.

Now, with public life about to resume, he finds himself with decidedly mixed feelings — “anticipation, dread and hope.”

Mr. Hirshon, a 54-year-old public relations consultant, is one of numerous people who find the everyday grind not only wearing, but also emotionally unsettling. That includes people with clinical diagnoses of anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder, and also some run-of-the-mill introverts.

A new survey from the American Psychological Association found that while 47 percent of people have seen their stress rise over the pandemic, about 43 percent reported no change in stress and 7 percent said they felt less stress.

Mental health experts said that this portion of the population found lockdown measures protective, a sort of permission to glide into more predictable spaces, schedules, routines and relationships. And experts say that while the lockdown periods have blessed the “avoidance” of social situations, the circumstances are poised to change.

“I am very worried about many of my socially anxious patients,” said Andrea Maikovich-Fong, a psychologist in Denver. That anxiety, she said, “is going to come back with a vengeance when the world opens up.”

Credit…Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

Former President Donald J. Trump recommended in a nationally televised interview on Tuesday evening that Americans who are reluctant to be vaccinated against the coronavirus should go ahead with inoculations.

Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, were vaccinated in January. And vaccine proponents have called on him to speak out in favor of the shots to his supporters — many of whom remain reluctant, polls show.

Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on “Fox News Primetime,” Mr. Trump said, “I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it — and a lot of those people voted for me frankly.”

He added: “It is a safe vaccine, and it is something that works.”

While there are degrees of opposition to coronavirus vaccination among a number of groups, polling suggests that the opinions break substantially along partisan lines.

A third of Republicans said in a CBS News poll that they would not be vaccinated — compared with 10 percent of Democrats — and another 20 percent of Republicans said they were unsure. Other polls have found similar trends.

Mr. Trump encouraged attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., late last month to get vaccinated.

Still, Mr. Trump — whose tenure during the pandemic was often marked by railing against recommendations from medical experts — said on Tuesday that “we have our freedoms and we have to live by that, and I agree with that also.”

With President Biden’s administration readying television and internet advertising and other efforts to promote vaccination, the challenge for the White House is complicated by perceptions of Mr. Trump’s stance on the vaccine.

Asked about the issue on Monday at the White House, Mr. Biden said Mr. Trump’s help promoting vaccination was less important than getting trusted community figures on board.

“I discussed it with my team, and they say the thing that has more impact than anything Trump would say to the MAGA folks is what the local doctor, what the local preachers, what the local people in the community say,” Mr. Biden said, referring to Mr. Trump’s supporters and campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

Credit…via Grace Sundstrom

This year perhaps more than ever, the college essay has served as a canvas for high school seniors to reflect on a turbulent and, for many, sorrowful year. It has been a psychiatrist’s couch, a road map to a more hopeful future, a chance to pour out intimate feelings about loneliness and injustice.

In response to a request from The New York Times, more than 900 seniors submitted the personal essays they wrote for their college applications. Reading them is like a taking a trip through two of the biggest news events of recent decades: the devastation wrought by the coronavirus, and the rise of a new civil rights movement.

In the wake of the high-profile deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police officers, students shared how they had wrestled with racism in their own lives. Many dipped their feet into the politics of protest.

And in the midst of the most far-reaching pandemic in a century, they described the isolation and loss that have pervaded every aspect of their lives since schools suddenly shut down a year ago. They sought to articulate how they have managed while cut off from friends and activities.

The coronavirus was the most common theme in the essays submitted to The Times, appearing in 393 essays, more than 40 percent. Next was the value of family, coming up in 351 essays, but often in the context of other issues, like the pandemic and race. Racial justice and protest figured in 342 essays.

Family was not the only eternal verity to appear. Love came up in 286 essays; science in 128; art in 110; music in 109; and honor in 32. Personal tragedy also loomed large, with 30 essays about cancer alone.

Some students resisted the lure of current events and wrote quirky essays about captaining a fishing boat on Cape Cod or hosting dinner parties. A few wrote poetry. Perhaps surprisingly, politics and the 2020 election were not of great interest.

Credit…Anna Watts for The New York Times

New York City landlords are seeking evictions nearly four times more often in the neighborhoods hit hardest by Covid-19 — predominantly Black and Latino communities that have borne the brunt of both health and housing crises since the virus swept the city last year, according to a new report.

The findings were the latest indication that thousands of the city’s most vulnerable residents could be forcibly removed from their homes as early as May, when a statewide pause on evictions is set to expire.

In New York City, about 40,000 residential tenants have been taken to court for eviction proceedings in the last year, with an average claim of $8,150, according to an analysis of state records by the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a coalition of housing nonprofits.

The neighborhoods with the highest Covid-19 death rates, the top 25 percent, received 15,517 eviction filings, while areas with the lowest death rates, in the bottom 25 percent, had 4,224 cases, through late February. Roughly 68 percent of residents in the hardest-hit ZIP codes were people of color, more than twice the share in the least-affected areas.

Marisol Morales, 55, moved to the United States from Panama in 1991, and has lived for 11 years in a two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. She lost her part-time job as a cook last spring and has been unable to pay her subsidized $1,647 rent for several months. Her landlord is now suing her.

“An affordable apartment does not exist in New York,” Ms. Morales said.

Credit…Desiree Rios for The New York Times

Pamela Addison is, in her own words, “one of the shyest people in this world.” Certainly not the sort of person who would submit an opinion essay to a newspaper, start a support group for strangers or ask a U.S. senator to vote for $1.9 trillion legislation.

But in the past five months, she has done all of those things.

Her husband, Martin Addison, a 44-year-old health care worker in New Jersey, died from the coronavirus in April after a month of illness. The last time she saw him was when he was loaded into an ambulance. At 37, Ms. Addison was left to care for a 2-year-old daughter and an infant son, and to make ends meet on her own.

“Seeing the impact my story has had on people — it has been very therapeutic and healing for me,” she said. “And knowing that I’m doing it to honor my husband gives me the greatest joy, because I’m doing it for him.”

With the United States’ coronavirus death toll — over 535,000 people — come thousands of stories like hers. Many people who have lost loved ones, or whose lives have been upended by long-haul symptoms, have turned to political action.

There are Marjorie Roberts, who got sick while managing a hospital gift shop in Atlanta and now has lung scarring; Mary Wilson-Snipes, still on oxygen more than two months after coming home from the hospital; and John Lancos, who lost his wife of 41 years on April 23.

In January, they and dozens of others participated in an advocacy training session over Zoom, run by a group called Covid Survivors for Change. This month, the group organized virtual meetings with the offices of 16 senators, and more than 50 group members lobbied for the coronavirus relief package.

The immediate purpose of the training session was to teach people how to do things like lobby a senator. The longer-term purpose was to confront the problem of numbers.

Numbers are dehumanizing, as activists like to say. In sufficient quantities — 536,472 as of Wednesday morning, for instance — they are also numbing. This is why converting numbers into people is so often the job of activists seeking policy change after tragedy.

Credit…Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times

The Biden administration will invest $10 billion in congressionally approved funds to vastly expand coronavirus screening for students returning to in-person learning and another $2.25 billion to increase testing in underserved communities, federal health officials said Wednesday.

The plan was announced Wednesday afternoon during the White House’s regular virus briefing. The federal Department of Health and Human Services had previewed the program in an email message to reporters.

Congress approved the $10 billion expenditure when it passed Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package, which the president signed into law last week. The health department said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would give the money to states “quickly as part of a strategy to help get schools open in the remaining months of this school year.”

Reopening schools has been one of President Biden’s highest priorities — and one of the most contentious issues facing the new administration. Millions of American children have been confined to virtual learning since the start of the pandemic a year ago. Education experts say that many children — and parents — are suffering, psychologically as well as academically. Still, most schools are already operating at least partially in person, and evidence suggests they are doing so relatively safely. Research shows in-school spread can be mitigated with simple safety measures like masking, distancing, hand-washing and opening windows.

Mr. Biden, who initially called for all schools to reopen within 100 days of his inauguration, later narrowed that goal to elementary and middle schools, and has set the reopening benchmark at “the majority of schools” — 51 percent. But there are still many hurdles, including convincing teachers unions that policies are in place to ensure a safe return and easing the fears and frustrations of parents.

One stumbling block to reopening has been the C.D.C.’s recommendation that people remain six feet apart from one another if they do not live in the same household. Amid a growing understanding of how the virus spreads, some public health experts are calling on the agency to reduce the recommended distance from six feet to three.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Mr. Biden’s senior medical adviser for the pandemic, and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, have said the guidance is being revisited.

The administration said Wednesday that the C.D.C. and state and local health departments would help states and schools in implementing testing programs. The agency intends to release the state-by-state allocation table on Wednesday, with final awards to be made early April.

The administration said the C.D.C. would also update its guidance on which types of tests should be used in different settings, such as schools, prisons or nursing homes.

The $2.25 billion for testing in underserved populations is intended to address the racial disparities laid bare by the pandemic. Black and Latino people are far more likely than white people to get infected with the coronavirus and to die from Covid-19, and those disparities extend to testing, experts say. The vaccination rate for Black people in the United States is half that of white people, and the gap for Hispanic people is even larger, according to a New York Times analysis of state-reported race and ethnicity information.

The money will be given in grants to public health departments to improve their ability to test for and track the virus.

“Testing is critical to saving lives and restoring economic activity,” Norris Cochran, the acting health secretary, said in a statement, adding that the department is determined to “expand our capacity to get testing to the individuals and the places that need it most.”

Credit…Marie Eriel Hobro for The New York Times

People who get Covid-19 shots at thousands of Walmart and Sam’s Club stores may soon be able to verify their vaccination status at airports, schools and other locations using a health passport app on their smartphones.

The retail giant said on Wednesday that it had signed on to an international effort to provide standardized digital vaccination credentials to consumers. The company joins a push already backed by major health centers and tech companies including Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, Cerner, Epic Systems, the Mitre Corporation and the Mayo Clinic.

The participation of Walmart, which is offering vaccines at thousands of stores, is likely to accelerate the adoption of digital vaccination credentials.

Credit…Commons Project

The company said people who get Covid shots at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores will be able to use free health passport apps to verify their vaccination records and then generate smartphone codes that could allow them to board a plane or enter a sports area.

The apps include Health Pass developed by Clear, a security company that uses biometric technology to confirm people’s identities at airports, and CommonPass, developed by the Commons Project Foundation, a nonprofit in Geneva.

JetBlue and Lufthansa are already using the CommonPass app to verify passengers’ negative virus test results before they can board certain flights.

“Walmart is the first huge-scale administrator of vaccines that is committing to giving people a secure, verifiable record of their vaccinations,” said Paul Meyer, the chief executive of the Commons Project. “We think many others will follow.”

Tags Covid19, eligibility, Live, News, Tourism, Updates, Vaccine, Variants

Health

How Unhealthy Was the Coronavirus Pandemic on Tourism in 2020? Have a look at the Numbers.

Post author By
Post date March 9, 2021

How Bad Was 2020 for Tourism? Look at the Numbers.

Numbers alone cannot capture the extent of the losses that have occurred as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Datasets are crude tools for plumbing the depth of human suffering or the immensity of our collective grief.

However, numbers can help us grasp the magnitude of certain losses – especially in the travel industry, which saw an amazing collapse in 2020.

It is estimated that international arrivals worldwide have fallen to 381 million in 2020, from 1.461 billion in 2019 – a decrease of 74 percent. In countries whose economies are heavily dependent on tourism, the steep decline in visitor numbers was and is devastating.

According to recent figures from the United Nations World Tourism Organization, the decline in international travel in 2020 resulted in an estimated loss of $ 1.3 trillion in global export revenue. As the agency notes, that number is more than 11 times the loss incurred in 2009 as a result of the global economic crisis.

The charts below, discussing changes in international arrivals, emissions, air travel, cruise lines, and car trips, provide a comprehensive view of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the travel industry and beyond.

Before the pandemic, tourism was responsible for one in ten jobs worldwide. However, travel plays an even bigger role in the local economy in many places.

Consider the Maldives, where international tourism has accounted for around two-thirds of the country’s GDP in recent years, when you factor in direct and indirect contributions.

When lockdowns broke out around the world, international arrivals in the Maldives declined. From April to September 2020, they were 97 percent lower than in the same period in 2019. Throughout 2020, arrivals were down more than 67 percent from 2019, while the government, keen to promote tourism and mitigate losses, lured travelers with marketing campaigns and even courted influencers with paid junkets.)

Similar developments were seen in countries like Macau, Aruba and the Bahamas: standstills in February and March, followed by incremental increases over the course of the year.

The economic impact of travel-related declines has been staggering. In Macau, for example, GDP fell by more than 50 percent in 2020.

And the effects could be long-lasting. In some areas, travel expenses are not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2024.

The pandemic has put commercial aviation into turmoil. One way to visualize the impact of lockdowns on air traffic is to consider the number of passengers who are checked daily at the Transportation Security Administration checkpoints.

Screenings of travelers fell in March before bottoming out on April 14 when 87,534 passengers were screened – a 96 percent decrease from the same date in 2019.

The numbers have risen relatively steadily since then, although the screening numbers are still less than half of last year.

According to the International Air Transport Association, an airline trading group, global passenger traffic fell 65.9 percent in 2020 compared to 2019, the largest decrease in aviation history year-over-year.

Another way to visualize the decline in air traffic over the past year is to consider the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by airplanes around the world.

According to information from Carbon Monitor, an international initiative that provides estimates of daily CO2 emissions, global emissions from aviation fell by almost 50 percent to around 500 million tons of CO2 last year, after around 1 billion tons in 2019. (These numbers are expected to rebound, though the timing will largely depend on how long the absence of business and international travel.)

Overall, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels decreased by 2.6 billion tons in 2020, a reduction of 7 percent compared to 2019, largely due to declining transports.

In the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, few industries played such a central and public role as the major cruise lines – starting with the outbreak on board the Diamond Princess.

In an industry scathing reprimand published in July, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accused cruise lines of spreading the virus widespread, citing 99 outbreaks aboard 123 cruise lines in US waters alone.

While exact passenger data for 2020 is not yet available, the publicly disclosed revenues – including ticket sales and onboard purchases – from three of the largest cruise lines offer a dramatic representation: strong revenues in the first few months of 2020 followed by a sharp decline.

The third quarter revenue of Carnival Corporation, the largest player in the industry, declined 99.5 percent year on year to $ 31 million in 2020, from $ 6.5 billion in 2019.

The outlook for the first few months of 2021 remains bleak: Currently, most cruise companies have canceled all trips until May or June.

International and domestic air traffic was significantly restricted by the pandemic. But how was the car ride affected?

One way to measure the change is to look at the Daily Travel Index created by Arrivalist, a company that uses mobile location data to measure consumer road trips over 50 miles or more in all 50 US states.

The numbers tell the story of a recovery slightly stronger than that of air travel: a sharp drop in March and April when state and local restrictions were put in place, followed by a gradual surge to around 80 percent of 2019 levels.

Another way to consider car trips in 2020 – and domestic travel in the US in a broader sense – is to check the visitor numbers for the American national parks.

Overall, the number of visitors to national parks decreased by 28 percent in 2020 – to 237 million visitors compared to 327.5 million in 2019, mainly due to temporary park closings and pandemic-related capacity restrictions.

The caveat, however, is that several parks saw record visitor numbers in the second half of the year when a wave of short-travel tourists began looking for safe and responsible forms of recreation.

Look at the numbers for recreational visits to Yellowstone National Park. After a closure in April, monthly visitor numbers to the park rose quickly above 2019 levels. September and October 2020 were both the busiest months, with October numbers beating the previous monthly record by 43 percent.

Some national parks near cities served as convenient recreational areas during the pandemic. In the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the numbers for 2020 were above the numbers for 2019 from March to December. In the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, numbers rose sharply after a 46-day closure in spring and partial closings through August. Between June and December, the park saw an additional 1 million visits compared to the same period in 2019.

Tags Bad, coronavirus, Numbers, Pandemic, Tourism

Health

How Unhealthy Was 2020 for Tourism? Have a look at the Numbers.

Post author By
Post date March 8, 2021