Tourism Recovery
Tourism is the end product, so its recovery is joined at the hip with the recovery of ‘cheerleaders.’ It will be a struggle to go on vacation after the pandemic, if one parent lost her/his job, because kids’ basic needs become more expensive when they enter the teenage zone.
Other cheerleaders include:
1. credit worthiness. Most people use credit cards to purchase airline tickets and other expenses. Will they have them post COVID-19 or will they be paying interest accumulated during the pandemic?
2. conferences, some companies might stop having them abroad.
3. airlines’ ability or inability to bounce back.
4. diminishing number of tourists for fear of being stranded in foreign countries or at sea.
5. tour buses, some invested in the latest buses not knowing the virus will strike.
6. hotels and lodges. Some might not make it post COVID-19.
7. Locals and how they perceive tourists. There is a lot of blame about where the virus originated.
8. Closure of places of interest. Lions are still sunbathing in South Africa and Botswana, Tour Eiffel in Paris will always be there, the Statue of Liberty is not going anywhere, Iguazu Falls in Brazil and Argentina is nature’s gift so it’s staying put, so is Niagara Falls in Canada. However, in other countries, certain structures were build especially as tourist attractions.
There are many other cheerleaders that are part of the tourism ball game or soccer match. Governments that rely on tourism for foreign exchange will definitely fight to keep it alive.
Those efforts should include bridging the gap between locals and tourists. Locals all over the world regard tourists as ‘them’, outsiders, that come to visit for a few weeks, spend some money and go back to Europe and America.
Internal tourist should be made to feel important as tourists, as they fly from one province to the other, to support hockey, swimming or curling teams. They are tourists for all intent and purposes, although they don’t have a visa because they are locals.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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