Travel embarks in right direction, report states

As vaccination rates keep rising and international travel restrictions are eased around the world, the world tourism industry is pacing continuously and steadily toward recovery, a report says.

The Report on World Tourism Economy Trends was released on March 2 by the World Tourism Cities Federation and the Tourism Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

In 2021, world tourism economic activities showed a significant tendency toward recovery, driven by the continuous loosening of fiscal and monetary policies in major economies, accelerated global vaccine production and rising vaccination rates, the report says.

However, the recovery of the world tourism economy is still relatively slow. The total number of global tourist trips and total world tourism revenue are still below 60 percent of pre-pandemic levels, according to the report.

To effectively respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic and continuously promote the development of the world's tourism economy, the federation and the research center have jointly conducted a study on the global tourism trends of 2022.

According to the report, a total number of 6.6 billion global tourist trips were made in 2021, and the world's total tourism revenue reached $3.3 trillion, showing a recovery of 53.7 percent and 55.9 percent of the 2019 levels, respectively.

The report predicts that a total of 8.45 billion global tourist trips will be made in 2022, and the total tourism revenue will amount to $4 trillion, respectively 68.8 percent and 67.8 percent of pre-pandemic levels recorded in 2019. Domestic tourism will see stronger recovery than international tourism, and tourism in developed economies will witness a better performance than that of emerging economies.

Besides, the report identifies several tendency changes in the structural recovery of global tourism in 2022.

Tourism economic growth will rely less on emerging economies and the Asia-Pacific region, and become more reliant on cities.

Moreover, greater discrepancies will be observed in the process of recovery. Gaps are widening between developed and developing countries, disparities are growing between leading tourism enterprises and their small and medium-sized counterparts, the report points out.

The tourism economy also enjoys the greater possibility of thriving in countries with high-level public medical care, and tourism recovery will be accompanied by technological, cognitive and sustainable transformation.

In the context of the environment and new means of communication, markets are rediscovering destinations and attractions, and sustainable tourism has become essential rather than optional, as it was prior to the pandemic, the report says.