The Bahamas and the Caribbean will have to find more creative ways than sea, sand and sun to attract tourists, as tourism recovery is threatened by a Middle East war, says the International Labour Organisation.
According to a new ILO Report issued over the weekend, factors hampering a recovery are fears of more attacks on tourists such as those that occurred in Bali and Kenya in 2002.
Other elements are the political developments in the Middle East and elsewhere, changing consumer travel preferences and the general state of the global economy, the ILO report says.
New tourism trends also show an inclination of travellers to stay closer to home. Experts agree that patterns such as “sea, sand and sun”- and particularly the desire of many tourists to travel to faraway, exotic destinations – are likely going out of fashion. “Developing countries will face a particular challenge in order to compensate for a decline in long distance travel”, says Juan Somavia, Director-General of the ILO.
The Central Bank of The Bahamas latest Quarterly Economic Review, September 2002, states that local tourism strengthened during the third quarter of 2002 despite the sluggish state of the United States’ economy and the heightened prospects of war in the Middle East.
Moreover, the World Tourism Organisation reported last Monday that tourism around the world hit a record last year despite fears of terrorism, although travelers stayed closer to home, made shorter visits and spent less.
For the first time, the number of international arrivals broke the 700-million mark, reaching nearly 715 million, the WTO said. That marked a 3.1 per cent rise from 2001, when the Sept. 11 attacks triggered a drop in 0.6 per cent drop from the previous year.
The ILO report says that millions of jobs in the world tourism sector have been lost due to political turmoil, the global economic downturn and growing unease among many travellers with little prospect of any recovery in employment in the sector before 2005.
The online report entitled Impact of the 2001-2002 crisis on the hotel and tourism industry, available on the ILO website, also says that during 2001 and 2002, tourism-related businesses shed some 6.6 million jobs worldwide – putting one out of every 12 workers in the sector out of a job.
“The expected recovery of the tourism industry in 2002 simply did not occur,” says Mr. Somavia. “After several years of four per cent growth or more, stagnant demand for travel and tourism last year caused a continued loss of jobs with no sign of a turnaround in 2003.”
The ILO will hold a Regional Tripartite Meeting on Employment in the Tourism Industry of Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, 13-15 May 2003 to address the issue of jobs and travel.
The problems facing tourism have had negative consequences in many countries, says the ILO, which The Bahamas is affiliated. As a result, while industry officials believe there may be a modest recovery for the travel and tourism sector in 2003, they are forecasting only minimal job gains. This means the year will likely end with a total of 6.4 million jobs lost since the beginning of the downturn.
According to the report, the hotel and tourism industry has been suffering from the combined effects of a general economic downturn that began in early 2001 and the shock wave from the September 11 attacks in the United States.
While economic recession had already brought down the industry’s previously strong 4.5 per cent annual growth rate to well below four per cent, the industry’s growth rate plunged for the whole year 2001 into negative territory between -one per cent and -five per cent, says the ILO.
In 2001, receipts from cross-border tourism dropped by 5.1 per cent at constant US Dollar prices and the number of international tourist arrivals worldwide fell by 0.6 per cent. The worst losses were felt in the Middle East and the Americas, particularly North America, where international tourist arrivals were down by 6.8 per cent in the whole year 2001, but as much as 22.6 per cent in the last four months of that year compared to equivalent periods of 2000.
“Developing countries will face a particular challenge in order to compensate for a decline in long distance travel”, said Mr. Somavia.
One of the countries most affected by the Sept. 11 events is the United States, with international tourist arrivals having fallen on average more than 30 per cent from the level of the same period the previous year, the report says.
Travel expenditure dropped by 5.8 per cent in 2001. There was still no recovery in consumer expenditure levels on travel in the US in 2002 (-0.4 per cent). Although overall travel expenditures in the US are expected to rise by 5 per cent in 2003, reaching the mark of US$ 555.6 million, this result would be still below that of the year 2000.
In the United States alone, employment in the whole industry was down 5.8 per cent in 2001, with an estimated 1.1 million jobs lost. Two-thirds of the estimated 760,000 expected job losses for 2002 in US metropolitan areas are in travel, tourism and related sectors.
Countries near the United States also received significantly fewer tourists in 2001 than at the same time of the year before, e.g. Canada (-19 per cent), Cuba (-26 per cent), the Dominican Republic (-25 per cent), Mexico (-24 per cent) and Jamaica (-20 per cent).
Among the rare winners in 2001 were countries in Southern Europe, and China, which experienced an impressive growth in both domestic and inbound tourism. Total annual revenue from tourism has grown on average by 12.7 per cent over recent years, much faster than the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which grew by an average rate of 7.4 per cent.
By Lindsay Thompson, The Nassau Guardian
