The international tourism industry has rebounded strongly, so is traveling worth looking forward to again?

While few industries have been immune to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic over the past three years, few have been hit as hard as the travel industry. After Covid-19 made 2020 the “worst year in history for tourism,” international tourist arrivals grew by just 11% in 2021 as long-term travel restrictions remained in place in many parts of the world. Now, nearly three years after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic, optimism is finally returning to the industry. “Tourism will come back,” said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Polyliksaveli at the opening of ITB Berlin 2023, the first in-person event of the world’s leading travel trade fair since 2019.

As shown in the chart below, global tourism rebounded strongly in 2022, with international tourist arrivals more than doubling from the previous two years. China's recent reopening has further boosted optimism for the tourism industry, as Asia lags behind other regions in recovering from the Covid-19 shock. The United Nations World Tourism Organization estimates that international tourist arrivals could reach 80% to 95% of pre-pandemic levels this year, depending on how quickly tourism rebounds across Asia. Last year, international tourist arrivals in the Asia-Pacific region were down more than 75% from pre-pandemic levels, while Europe and the Middle East were within 20% of 2019 figures.

Before the coronavirus, global tourism had been growing almost uninterrupted for decades. Since 1980, international tourist arrivals have soared from 277 million to nearly 1.5 billion in 2019. As the chart below shows, the two biggest crises of the past few decades, the SARS epidemic in 2003 and the global financial crisis in 2009, pale in comparison to the Covid-19 pandemic.