Explaining what needs to be done to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic that badly affected the tourism industry, Secretary General of the Mediterranean Tourism Foundation (MTF), Mr. Andrew Agius Muscat said, “The tourism, hospitality and travel sectors need to rethink their operations and create new experiences by using technology.”
Many countries of the world had a difficult year regarding their economy due to Covid-19. Especially, Mediterranean countries, suffered greatly in this process. How do you evaluate the year we have left behind?
Year 2020 was a nightmare for all those who work or operate a business in the tourism, hospitality and travel sectors across the world. The unimaginable happened. As year over year, tourism was growing across the world as traveling was becoming more accessible to more people the key issues seemed to revolve around the challenges caused by over-tourism.
Indeed, as in February 2020 I was attending a conference in Istanbul discussing over-tourism and what needs to be done to focus actions towards sustainable tourism initiatives. Then suddenly, we started seeing in the news that China was being locked down due to a mysterious virus which was killing people in a far away and relatively unknown city – Wuhan. The rest is the start of a nightmare called Corona virus and for the more politically correct- Covid-19.
Suddenly traveling across the world started to take a stop and that was the doom of our hospitality and tourism sector. This caught a number of investors in this sector unprepared as the economic scenario changed from a positive to a negative one overnight. Many employees started to lose their jobs and lifetime careers in the tourism sector, and investors started to face series financial difficulties and some even started to close down to avoid bankruptcies. A real nightmare. And what’s worst, this is still not yet over. The effects which started in 2020 are still very much with us, and despite that we all believed that year 2021 would be a year for relaunch, unfortunately the difficulties being faced by the tourism, travel and hospitality sectors are still very serious.
‘THE PANDEMIC HAS CRIPPLED THE AVIATION AND CRUISE LINE BUSINESS’
Italy, Greece, Croatia, Turkey and Egypt’s tourism suffered severely because of COVID-19. So how were the Mediterranean Islands affected by this crisis? Tourism centres on the islands went bankrupt as their income fell; Are there any hope for the island economies to recover?
Islands have a major challenge. Whereas continental and large countries could at least during the pandemic manage the damage caused by focusing on internal tourism activities, for smaller islands this is not an option. This because to travel to an island you need to get to it by plane or by ship. The pandemic has crippled the aviation and cruise line business and consequently islands whose economy depends on tourism just blocked.
Of course, hope is the last thing to die and if anything else the pandemic is also proving how resilient tourism is. Many operators in the wider tourism sector are trying to reinvent themselves. For example, a number of restaurants have started to offer take-away services and hotels are transforming their conference halls into office spaces. But of course this is not enough to be sustainable.
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