‘GET vaxxed, get traveling.”
This is the position of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), as its President and CEO Julia Simpson, unveiled on Thursday the body’s latest Economic Impact Report (EIR), which forecast global travel and tourism to grow by an average of 5.8 percent per annum in the next decade.
Responding to a question concerning unvaccinated individuals wanting to travel, she stressed, “The travel policies of a majority of countries is you have to be fully vaccinated to visit. And if I’m completely honest, I believe in full vaccination. I think it’s far better than any method to keep us safe and be able to travel.”
Government data indicated about 40 percent of the Philippines’s population remains unvaccinated.
The WTTC’s 2022 EIR report also pointed to a significant rebound in travel and tourism across the Asia-Pacific region from 2022 to 2032, which is estimated to create almost 77 million new jobs. At the same time the sector’s contribution towards gross domestic product (GDP) is projected to grow at an average annual rate of 8.5 percent in the next 10 years, more than double the 4-percent growth rate for the region’s overall economy.
“In 2019, Asia Pacific was the fastest growing region in terms of travel and tourism in the world. It then became the hardest hit region, [down by] 60 percent. But the recovery is going to be so stellar, it’s going to recover powerfully. This does depend on China reopening,” Simpson underscored.
The WTTC forecast the region’s travel and tourism sector to fully recover by 2023, growing by some 26 percent to $3.4 trillion from an estimated $2.7 trillion this year.
Globally, the sector is seen reaching $14.6 trillion in value by 2032, accounting for 11.3 percent of the world’s economy. The WTTC also reported global travel and tourism GDP could reach prepandemic levels by 2023, growing by 15 percent year-on-year to $9.6 trillion. The sector’s contribution to GDP is expected to rise by a massive 43.7 percent to almost $8.4 trillion by the end of 2022, amounting to 8.5 percent of the total global economic GDP.
This will be matched by an increase in employment, up 8.2 percent to 324 million jobs in 2023, just 2.7 percent off pre-pandemic levels.
“Over the next decade, travel and tourism will create 126 million new jobs worldwide. In fact, one in three of every new job created will be related to our sector. Looking to this year and the next, WTTC forecast a brighter future with both GDP and employment set to reach prepandemic levels by next year.”
She noted, “The recovery in 2021 was slower than expected due in part to the impact of the Omicron variant but mainly due to an uncoordinated approach by governments who rejected the advice of the World Health Organization, which maintained that closing borders would not stop the spread of the virus but would only serve to damage economies and livelihoods.”
The WTTC, which is holding its 21st Global Summit in Manila, reported on Wednesday that the Philippines’s travel and tourism sector will grow an average of 6.7 percent per annum in the next decade, exceeding the country’s overall GDP growth of 5.6 percent for the same period. (See, “WTTC sees PHL tourism raising $155 billion by 2032,” in the BusinessMirror, April 20, 2022.)
Image credits: Bernard Testa