KHALEEJ TIMES, Sunday, May 9, 2021 | Ramadan 27, 1442
GCC tourism sector to recover faster than other Mena countries
Emirates:
The tourism sector in the six GCC countries will recover faster than the
other tourism-dependent Middle East and North Africa (Mena) countries such
as Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco and Egypt, the Institute of
International Finance (IIF) said.
The Washing DC-based think-tank foresees tourism in the Mena region will not
return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023.
Garbis Iradian, chief economist for Mena and CCA at IIF, said partial
information for the first quarter of this year showed that the number of tourist
arrivals to the oil-importing Mena countries were just 25 per cent of what they
were in first quarter of 2020, and recent increases in Covid-19 cases in key
source markets, including the EU, will delay the partial recovery to the second
half of this year.
“We expect the five tourism-dependent Mena economies to suffer much longer than
the six GCC countries from the negative impacts of the pandemic,” said Iradian.
Interestingly, the region’s largest travel and tourism exhibition Arabian Travel
Market (ATM) 2021 begins in Dubai next week, becoming the first in-person travel
and tourism event in the world since the onset of the pandemic. Around 62
countries represented on exhibition floor such as KSA, Germany, Italy, Greece,
Cyprus, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, South Korea, The Philippines, Malaysia,
Maldives and Israel.
“The recovery will be gradual and limited in scope, and tourism in the Mena
region is not expected to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2023. Tourists
from the EU, UK, Russia, and the USA may be enticed by other countries in the
Mediterranean region, with low-cost brands (Turkey), or to continue to focus
more on domestic trips or nature in countries where they reside,” he said.
IIF warned that virus mutations and slow vaccine rollout in non-GCC Mena
countries pose downside risks to a projected strong recovery in tourism in 2022.
“Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, and Lebanon could face repeated outbreaks before
vaccines become widely available, limiting the chance of herd immunity before
end- 2022,” added Iradian.
“German, French, UK, Russian, and GCC nationals, who combined accounted for more
than 70 per cent of the number of tourist arrivals before the pandemic, may now
opt to spend their vacations in countries where the health system is reliable,
and the Covid-19 vaccination rate is relatively high,” added Iradian.
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