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World tourism will recover no earlier than 2023, said Zurab Pololikashvili, Secretary General of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

“The UNWTO Panel of Experts predicts a very positive upturn due to high deferred travel demand in the second and third quarters of 2022. At the moment, we are seeing a slight recovery in the regions of Southern Europe, Central America and the Caribbean,” Pololikashvili told TASS.

According to him, 45% of experts believe that international tourism will return to the level of 2019 in  2024 or later, and 43% believe that this will happen already in 2023. The pace of vaccination and its uniformity are of key importance, as well as effective collaboration on travel and health protocols. Answering the  TASS question whether the mutual recognition of covid passports between the Russian Federation and the EU would help the restoration of the tourism sector, the UNWTO Secretary General noted: "Without a doubt." “The easing of travel restrictions for vaccinated travelers and the acceptance of various vaccines have helped increase consumer confidence in travel,” he added.

Pololikashvili stressed that UNWTO stands for inclusive and non-discriminatory tourism. The vaccines should be only part of a larger joint action plan, which includes, among other things, tests at departure and arrival, digital passes and so on, he said. “Now that we have lived with the pandemic for a year and a half, we cannot repeat the same mistakes again. It is always necessary to maintain coordination [between countries]. We have to live with the pandemic by implementing security protocols and finding technological solutions, ”the expert explained.

At the moment, the next obstacle to the resumption of world tourism may be a new strain of COVID-19 - "omicron". Russia, like many other states, restricts entry from African countries. Cases of infection with the new variant of the coronavirus have already been confirmed in Belgium, Hong Kong, Great Britain, Italy, Germany, Australia and Israel, which closed their borders for two weeks. However, the industry hopes that the situation will develop in the same way as was noted when the delta strain was detected - after collecting more data, the governments concluded that there should not be any special measures to combat its spread.

Source: https://profi.travel