Travel agents, operators, and hoteliers are bracing for at least months, if not a full year, of economic disruption from the outbreakof Covid-19 , with long-term effects that may ripple well into 2021.
Even as infections of the novel coronavirus seemed to be slowing last week, the effects of the epidemic on the global tourism industry were accelerating rapidly.
The impact of the pneumonia-like disease caused by the virus, called Covid-19, is already being felt across the Asian continent, where leisure and business travel contributed $884 billion to gross domestic product in 2017, the most recent year for which data has been compiled by the World Travel and Tourism Council. (Projections for 2018 are about $1 trillion.) For China alone, inbound tourism brought
By The Nation (Thailand)
February 18, 2020
