Coronavirus to affect world tourism rates, says WTO adviser

Of late, the spread of Coronavirus has severely impacted global tourism rates, making it the largest impediment in terms of global economic growth, said Adviser to the World Tourism Organization (WTO) Saeed el-Batouti. WTO adviser mentioned that there is a major drop in aviation demand forecast to 0.6% instead of 4.8 percent. He further added that the rate of bookings has declined by 11 percent since the outbreak of coronavirus. Expedia has removed China off its tourist destinations temporarily from the search engine, comprising bookings of hotels and flights because of the epidemic, as per el-Batouti, who said that there is need of tourists in Chinese cities. These 5 global navigation companies who have stopped their cruises to and from China for the time being – Norwegian Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Oceania Cruises and Cunard. El-Batouti also mentioned that the negative effect of coronavirus has extended to tourism in Southeast Asia countries including: Japan – Hong Kong – Macau – Thailand – Malaysia – Singapore – Vietnam – Cambodia – India – Sri Lanka – Bangladesh – Nepal – Bhutan – Myanmar – Philippines – Indonesia – Australia – New Zealand and the Pacific Islands (Oceania). Tourist sites, hotels and shops remained unfilled because of the fear of the outbreak. He stated that airlines are anticipated to lose almost 29 billion dollars in terms of revenue in 2020, and for tourism revenue losses in principle, are hoped to reach 3 billion USD worldwide. China sends almost 200 million tourists to various touristic destinations worldwide where Chinese tourists shows the highest tourism spending in the world amounting to 277 billion dollar in one year. As the outbreak of coronavirus is constantly spreading outside China, the World Health Organization has declared that coronavirus a global emergency, where the infected number in China reached 79,565 cases and the death toll hit 2,619 people.