The global travel and tourism sector’s contribution to the world economy is expected to rebound to pre-pandemic levels by 2023 to 9.6 trillion dollars.
Industry experts in a forum in the Philippines on Thursday said in 2022, the sector was forecast to contribute 8.35 trillion dollars to the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 5.8 trillion dollars in 2021.
Julia Simpson, president and CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council, told a global summit in Manila that “this year, we are gaining ground. We are getting there, and our customers are rediscovering travel.’’
Simpson said the sector was also expected to provide 324 million jobs in 2023, which was an almost pre-pandemic level.
In 2022, travel and tourism employment was projected to reach 300 million, up from 298 million in 2021.
The global travel and tourism industry was among the worst hit sectors by the Covid-19 pandemic, with earnings dropping by more than 50 per cent in 2020, Simpson said, citing data from the global economic impact report by Oxford University.
The report also forecasts that in the next 10 years, the sector would grow by an average of 5.8 per cent, outstripping global GDP growth, Simpson said.
“It means that a sector that was badly damaged in COVID was not only going to come back by 2023, but in the next 10 years, it is going to motor ahead of global GDP,” she added.
The three-day global summit in Manila was being attended by more than 1,000 delegates, and was the first international conference to be held in the Philippines since the country closed its borders due to COVID-19 in 2020.
