Almost in all parts of the globe, the tourism and hospitality sector continues to make substantial contributions in terms of employment creation and generation of foreign revenue. For instance, in 2018 alone tourism contributes 10.4 percent of the world GDP and creates a staggering 319 million jobs internationally, according to World Travel and Tourism Council, 2019 report.
Currently, tourism is ranked 3rd in export earnings after chemicals and fuels and ahead of automotive products and food generating five billion USD a day in exports globally, UNWTO. This monumental and thriving sector, however, completely freezes since the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic. In its recent press release, the United Nations World Tourism Organization announces a quite disturbing projection of international tourism drop in 2020.
According to this grim forecast, international tourist arrival could decline by 60-80 percent over the year 2020. In the light of continued uncertainty and confusion regarding the pandemic since several issues, such as when the pandemic will go away or when vaccines can be discovered and be available as global common goods are still unknown.
At this stage, even the real source of the virus is not yet accurately traced and as a result of such critical issues, the fate of international tourism seems to be bleak in 2020. Subsequently, the sector is expected to lose approximately one billion tourists, 100 to 120 million direct tourism jobs and around 1.2tn USD in tourism revenue in 2020.
In order to manage this unprecedented crisis and thereby rescue this massive sector from a total collapse, several countries and blocks started to develop COVID-19 mitigation strategies and recovery plans. As crisis management experts commonly agree, any crisis management involves the planning, implementation, and improvisation, it is indeed wise to see all the available options so as to redeem the global travel and tourism sector form the devastating impacts of COVID-19 global pandemic.
In this respect, in addition to unilateral measures taken by member countries, for instance, the EU as a unified block set out a summer holiday rescue package that espouses the elimination of travel restrictions and border controls throughout the EU to save the block’s travel and tourism sector. As a center of gravity to the global travel and tourism, tourism is, in fact, the lifeblood of the EU economy contributing some 190 billion Euros from about 385 million trips on an average summer season, according to Euronews. According to the rescue package, passengers need to buy tickets and doing check-ins online.
Moreover, sanitizers must be freely available, and food and drinks should not be served while onboard. In tourist destinations, governments need to make all necessary preparations including health system capacity, making necessary adjustments
to operate with fewer staff, training all tourism staff on prevention and COVID-19’s symptoms, and allocating slots for mealtimes, swimming pools and gym visits.
The travel and tourism sector also becomes a vital economic pillar in many African countries. According to the UNWTO (2019) report, Africa has hosted some 67 million international tourists (five percent of the global share) generating about US$38 billion in revenue and revealing the fastest growth rate in the world (seven percent).
Nevertheless, despite its wide-ranging tourism resources, the continent has been performing very poorly. The sector has been forecasted to create employment opportunities for more than 16 million people directly and indirectly in Sub-Sharan Africa only by 2021 demonstrating the enormous impacts of tourism in tackling poverty and thereby improving people’s livelihood in developing regions.
However, in addition to being one of the hardest-hit sectors due to COVID-19 outbreak, the future recovery and growth of the travel and tourism sector are going to be highly affected in emerging destinations because of an impending global economic downturn triggered by the pandemic.
To mitigate the far-reaching consequences of the pandemic on the travel and tourism sector, destination management organizations and the hospitality industry in developing countries need to formulate new and innovative mechanisms and approaches on destination development, management, and grassroots community engagement.
Whether we like it or not the unfolding fact that we have to comprehend is that COVID-19 changes and is going to change the way in which the hospitality and tourism sector functions. It entirely will change the industry’s landscape in various frontiers. In fact, after COVID-19, the global travel and tourism won’t be the same as it was before.
And perhaps tourist activities including ways of greetings and physical distances will alter. Both the way in which the sector operates and how tourists travel and consume their holidays would also change. In response to acute tourist plunges, competitions among various destinations also will be intensified.
Having that in mind, therefore, critical questions we need to ask here are: How we can better prepare for this inevitable change in global travel and tourism landscape? Are we aware of these impending changes and follow suit or we are simply waiting to kick off from where we have stopped and continue business as usual? Are we in the meantime looking for new tourism development paradigms that might help us to embrace changes quickly and enable the sector to be more resilient for future similar unforeseeable incidents?
Properly addressing these fundamental inquiries might help us to gradually recover the sector from the wounds of the COVID-19 pandemic and perhaps drive it forward onto somewhat a different and
more resilient avenue in the future. From the Ethiopian and perhaps also African perspective, the following points could be helpful if they are carefully examined and operationalized.
Dealing with the pandemic
Even though we strive to save tourism, we need to make saving lives and putting the pandemic under control, our priority and the prime agenda. Here a lot is expected especially from the tourism and hospitality community in terms of taking precautionary measures, and properly implementing the WHO protocols, creating awareness about the pandemic, donating some percentages of their salary to support employees who are laid off, SMTEs, and communities in the surroundings of protected areas.
Maximizing our social capital amid the crisis- strengthening and optimizing our unique social capital which is essential more than ever in fighting the virus and rescue people’s lives, show solidarity and help people who are affected including people who work in the informal sector, attractions, protected areas, and the private sector.
Consequently, given the tourist attractions are located at the local level; the recovery plan should follow a bottom-up approach. A concerted effort shall be exerted at the destination level to prevent community transmission and to make sure that national parks, as well as sensitive ecological areas,
are strictly protected during the pandemic.
Modifying tourism products and offers
Reexamining and retouching our product offer in terms of content, quality, diversity, price and even amending our service language and augmenting authenticity in all our offers since authenticity is the main underlying reason why tourists decide to travel thousands of miles.
Marketing and promotion
Looking for possible alternative target markets and redesigning our traditional marketing and promotion techniques is crucial. Based on one of my recent studies in contrast to earlier days, recently the percentage of Asian tourists has been on the increase (might not necessarily be leisure tourist).
Therefore, given the Asian economy is not hard hit by COVID-19 compared to the EU and North American economies, it could be wise to capitalize on the already increasing tourist flow from the Asian continent especially, countries such as China, South Korea, Vietnam, and India. Indeed, it also would be essential to pay more attention to the Asian market since the new world order is shifting to Asia, where countries such as China and Korea emerging as new regional and global powerhouses.
Designing special schemes to attract the Diaspora community especially in the aftermath of the crisis.
It would be very easy to attract this segment of the consumer in contrast to other international tourists due to their preexisting connections and knowledge. Hence, given enticing offers are in place, it can be possible to transit the hard times until circumstances are fully back to normal. In fact, for countries such as Ethiopia, diaspora tourism can be a double-edged sword and so far, it is a missed opportunity.
Countries such as South Korea, China, and India make wise use of their diaspora community to support the tourism sector. Thus, diaspora tourism can be a viable and reliable alternative segment of a tourism market for countries such as Ethiopia who has a significant number of diaspora communities in the long run too.
Moreover, since the vast majority of Ethiopian leisure tourists are senior citizens so far, this time might provide us a good opportunity to refocus our target market on the young and more vibrant international tourist market. As it is empirically verified, the Millennials and Post millennials are becoming the most influential global tourism consumers and for these target markets experiencing unique local culture
natural landscape and local cuisines are the top three activities in destinations they visit which Ethiopia has in abundance.
Another significant point the Ministry of Culture and Tourism needs to look into with regards to marketing is to introduce COVID-19 recovery tourist coupons for free entrance to some attractions, accommodation for a night, a meal in renowned traditional restaurants and so on depending on tourists’ length of stay in consultation and collaboration with tourism service providers.
Moreover, designing and introducing COVID-19 Madelia to incoming tourists where some of the unknown iconic attractions of the country and the names of Doctors and Nurses who are fighting the virus on the frontline are sculptured can be very enticing. This also can be used as a tourism promotional tool in the digital and mainstream media as well as through tourists’ word-of-mouth which is more powerful.
Execution or operationalization
Finally, with regards to executing all the above-mentioned recommendations, intensifying overarching cooperation
among key tourism and hospitality stakeholders for a modern, convenient, smooth, and efficient travel and tourism industry including the transformation of our service culture and protected area management is crucial.
In this regard, special attention should be given to the Ethiopian Airline since the national flag carrier has a very important role to play in various respects. It is also pivotal to seek for continuous advice and properly utilizing tourism and hospitality experts (academicians and practitioners). Moreover, frequent meetings and discussions to intensify coordination and to speed up taskforce executions at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism can be profoundly important in the race against time.
Recent reports of the Chinese Global Television Network (CGTN) and Euronews show that rare specious in Africa including the black rhinos in South Africa and gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda are currently under threat as ecotourism income can no longer support conservations efforts. That is why saving the travel and tourism sector simply goes beyond saving people’s lives as it is all about rescuing the rapidly vanishing natural ecosystem due to poor resource management especially in developing countries.
So far some countries such as New Zealand and Thailand declared that they are corona free. Several European countries including Spain and Italy (the worst-hit EU countries) ease restrictions and they are planning to open their borders for international tourism. Fortunately, Ethiopia is listed as one of the seven countries that have potential to become major tourist destinations in a post-COVID-19 world according to Forbes Magazine.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Amare Nega WONDIRAD is currently working as an Assistant Professor at Sol International Hospitality Management (SIHOM), Sol International School, Woosong University. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D. Degree) in Hotel and Tourism Management from The School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and his MSc in the consortium Universities of Southern Denmark (Denmark), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) and University of Girona (Catalonia, Spain). He can reached at: amare.wondirad@sis.ac.kr or amarem6@gmail.com
The Ethiopian Herald June 16, 2021
BY AMARE NEGA
