WHAT'S NEXT?: How we travel, where we travel and whether we travel at all will mean tremendous change in the decades ahead.

• [New] While the demand for U.S. lodging is forecasted to return to pre-crisis levels in the third quarter of 2022, the national ADR is not expected to recover on a nominal basis until the third quarter of 2023.
• [New] Prospects for tourism have been downgraded several times with current estimates by the World Tourism Organization pointing to a decline of 58% to 78% in tourist arrivals for 2020: The further challenge of a second or third wave of infections poses additional risks to Africa's recovery.
• [New] The variation in relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions will ensure varied rates of recovery in foodservice sales while business and tourism travel will remain minor until late in 2020.
• [New] The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), which predicts a decline in international arrivals of between 58% and 80% this year.
• [New] For the most part, factories have resumed operations and the market has opened with some travel and logistical restrictions, leading IDC to believe the China domestic market will only see a single digit decline in 2020.
• Travel is not expected to fully return until next year, with a majority of Americans saying they have no plans to travel for the rest of 2020.
• Transformational changes in the UK economy and connectivity could quadruple annual demand for rail travel to 760 million trips by 2050, with the strongest growth in demand being between large urban centres.
• EasyJet which has three AOCs in The United Kingdom, Europe and Switzerland, justified the job cuts with the slump in air traffic as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and their expectation that the demand for air travel will not return to the level of 2019 before 2023.
• Tourism is the most affected sector, with over half of tourism businesses predicting that their 2020 revenue will be about a third, or less, of what they had been expecting going into the year.
• While the demand for U.S. lodging is forecasted to return to precrisis levels in the third quarter of 2022, the national ADR is not expected to recover on a nominal basis until the third quarter of 2023.
• Rural tourism in England contributes over £13 billion per year to the economy, and VisitBritain predicts the £80 billion domestic tourism industry, spanning holidays and day visits, will suffer a £22 billion drop this year.
• This year, travel restrictions and lockdowns in response to the Covid-19 pandemic will erase more oil demand than the shipping sector consumed in all of 2019 - wiping out a decade's worth of growth.
• Current reduction in the cost of spending of space tourism is expected to gain traction for the global space tourism market over coming years.
• The drastic reduction in air travel - a 97% reduction in passenger flights compared to the previous year - has been devastating for the aviation industry, with estimates that the industry in the UK could lose over £20 billion in revenue in 2020.
• Visit Britain envisages a potential 59 pc decline in inbound tourism to the UK this year, depriving businesses of almost £20bn in revenues with previous forecasts.
• Iran's GDP - which had already fallen in each of the previous two years - is expected to shrink again in 2020, by 5.3%, partly reflecting the effects of the large-scale COVID-19 outbreak on domestic consumption and the services sectors (e.g., tourism).
• The global international tourist arrivals in 2020 is predicted to fall by 20% to 30% compared to the previous year (2019), which translates into a loss of $ 30-50 billion in travel spending by the international visitors.
• International tourist arrivals in Australia could drop to 78%, which translates to a drop of up to 1.1 billion international arrivals and a loss of US$ 1.2 trillion (nearly A$ 1.9 trillion) in export revenues from tourism, representing the largest decline in the history of the industry.
• The UK has the ambition to become the most accessible tourism destination in Europe by 2025, increasing the number of international visitors with disabilities by 33%.
• In the UK, Visit Britain has forecast a decline in inbound tourist numbers of 54% for 2020, which equates to 21.9m fewer arrivals and a loss of £15.1bn in tourist revenue.
• Some recovery is expected in the final quarter of 2020 and into early 2021, while domestic tourism is expected to recover faster than the demand for international travel.
• The Great Barrier Reef is worth an estimated $4 billion a year in tourism revenue for the Australian economy but is at risk of losing its coveted world heritage status because warmer oceans brought about by climate change have damaged its health.

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Last updated: 04 July 2020