Tourism Cohabiting with a Pandemic: Lessons from the COVID-19 (2020–2023)

Abstract

The pandemic caused by the striking transmission of COVID-19 in early 2020 decimated the population by attacking the most vulnerable—those with chronic health problems and the elderly: one of tourism’s most important clientele. Before the authorities had the tools to treat and protect the population from this virus, unprecedented sanitary measures were imposed in most countries of the world, restricting freedom of movement—the core of the tourism experience. If no economic sector was spared, tourism was among the hardest hit. As a luxury product, tourism was the first sector to suffer the repercussions of political, economic, environmental and health crises. Economic downturns usually result in layoffs and loss of revenues. The COVID-19 crisis also led to the partial “destructuring” of the tourism industries. In those circumstances, the challenge was to maintain just enough tourism activity to save the enterprises and services involved while preventing the spread of the disease any further. The crisis exposed the fragility of the tourism industry’s capability to adapt and cope with a sanitary crisis. Based on experiences identified in the literature during the pandemic, this study proposes an overview of the adaptation strategies deployed by the tourism industries. The study aims to pinpoint resilient avenues for dealing with future health crises.

1. Introduction

In terms of its nature—the transmission of a virus, the crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020–2023 was nothing new. It was the lightning transmission of the disease, its severity—fatal for many, the absence of treatment for the first year of the pandemic, and the shutdown of the world economy—including tourism—that left their mark on the collective imagination. As an agent of virus transmission, tourism was no innocent player in the disaster. It was not the first time. In the Middle Ages, it took travellers 10 years to spread the bubonic plague (Black Death) to the four corners of Europe and North Africa. The great influenza (“Spanish”) pandemic of 1917–1918 took a year to reach Europe from the USA, carried by soldiers in the midst of war. In 2020, the COVID-19 virus took just over a month to spread from China—where it is believed to have originated—to the entire planet. The enlightened transmission of viruses cannot be dissociated from technological advances in transport and human mobility, as evidenced by the effects produced by a billion cross-border journeys across the planet every year [1, 2]. Travel (business) and tourism (leisure travel) have thus become both the main agents of propagation and its main victim. By April 28, 2020, 2 months after its emergence on American soil, COVID-19 had claimed as many victims (58,365) in that country as the Vietnam War had in its 20 years of conflict (1955–1975) [3].

Before the pandemic, travel and tourism (including its direct, indirect and induced effects) were considered to be one of the world’s largest sectors, “accounting for 1 in 4 of all new jobs created worldwide”, and credited with “10.3% of all jobs (333 million) and 10.3% of global GDP ($9.6 trillion)” [4]. In short, in many places, overcapacity was leading to situations of over-tourism—the saturation of tourist sites and residences when the number of tourists exceeds one of the dimensions used to measure carrying capacity (physical, environmental, visual, noise and/or socio-cultural), leading to the deterioration (or even exhaustion) of resources, the quality of the expected recreational tourism experience and/or the quality of life of the host populations. Despite pre-pandemic appearances, tourism is a fragile business sector that is sensitive to the vagaries of economic, political, environmental and health conditions, both locally and internationally.

When the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020 [5]—for a chronology of events, see [6, 7, 8], the governments of the richest countries decreed the shutdown of economic sectors deemed non-essential and imposed an initial two-week confinement on their populations. No one could have imagined at the time that evil would strike for 2 years and that the crisis would extend well beyond this period, generating inflation and even recession. In the space of 2 months, the globalised economy stopped spinning. Among the collateral victims were the tourism industries, which were also condemned to confinement. While it may seem obscene, at first glance, to bemoan tourism when healthcare workers are giving their all to care for the sick in failing conditions—many at the cost of their lives at a time when there is little understanding of how the virus spreads and no cure yet exists—other human dramas are playing out behind the closed doors of containment. From 1 day to the next, entrepreneurs, tour operators, hoteliers, innkeepers, restaurateurs and suppliers, attraction managers, their employees and their families are faced with uncertainty: there are no more tourists, no more customers and no more income. It took only 2 months after the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) virus for the tourism industry to collapse as borders were closed, travel and even socialisation banned—unheard of in peacetime.

The pandemic put tourism on hold for an indefinite period. A luxury product, tourism requires mobility and socialisation—two pillars that are proving to be the main vectors for cross-border transmission of the disease. State-imposed restrictions on both mobility and socialisation generated anxiety among the population, and even domestic violence. This is a reminder of the importance of leisure, to which tourism belongs. As a means of asserting social and even identity, the tourist experience provides customers with physical and psychological benefits through contact with and discovery of new environments. As a phenomenon of post-industrial societies, tourism can, when the time comes, be seen as a solution to the anxiety problems of populations, rather than as an obstacle, at least if it is practised domestically. This will suit certain destinations with a local clientele. However, in emerging countries such as the Caribbean, where the clientele is essentially made up of foreign tourists, the barriers to mobility are even more catastrophic. As a result, in 2020 alone, the pandemic caused the loss of 62 million jobs, which represented nearly US$4.9 trillion and a 50.5% reduction in tourism contribution to GDP ([4], p. 8).

The near-complete cessation of tourism, particularly international tourism, raised the spectre of destructuralisation, i.e., the permanent reallocation of key industry infrastructures—such as transport, accommodation and catering—to functions other than those for which they were designed (residential housing, for example). When tourism resumed, it was feared that some infrastructures (transport and accommodation, mostly) would no longer be available and that the industry would shrink. The dependence of some economies on tourism alone also showed its limits. Foreign tourism had to be part of the solution, along with economic diversification.

Not only does the pandemic demonstrate the fragility of national and global economies, but it also sheds light on shortcomings in the degree of preparedness of states and the ability of their societies to cope with a crisis of this scale. Some researchers [9, 10, 11] have addressed health crises in their work, particularly in relation to the SARS pandemic (for instance, [12]). However, none of their studies covered the management of such a universal crisis as the one caused by COVID-129. Some studies have looked at the effects of epidemics, i.e., localised to a given area. Studies on the impact of international mobility have tended to focus on the (involuntary) import of foreign plant and animal species (see [13]). The effects of a pandemic on tourism will not be studied until 2020. Hence, we found ourselves “building the plane in flight” to use the image coined in 2016 by a Google director, Max Ventilla.

The crisis also raised doubts about societies’ ability to respond to other crises of the same magnitude in the possible event of multiple crises—combinations of sources of disruption [14]. Yet recent history has left clues in its wake as to the possibilities of global crises: the terrorism attacks of September 11 (2001), the avian flu (SARS, 2002–2004), the H1N1 virus (2009), the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (2012) and the Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Central and West Africa (2013–2016). Apart from the political terrorist attacks of September 11, the other major events were all health-related. They all reached the epidemiological level (contagion of a large number of people in a given region where the disease does not usually prevail) or the pandemic level (contagion that spreads to the entire population of several countries or even beyond a continent) without ever reaching the planetary threshold.

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic are widely described in both grey and medical literature. Tourism intellectuals were fast not to be outdone, launching as early as March 2020 special issues written on the spur of the moment, almost unanimously calling for a rethink of the way the tourism industries operate, arguing for more equitable and sustainable consumer choices (see [15, 16]). Some even called for the “deglobalisation” of tourism (see [17]). Wishful thinking if ever there was, but disconnected from the economic reality facing tourism entrepreneurs, many of whom have been bled dry by this pandemic that they never saw coming and against which few, if any, had been able to immunise themselves financially. This raises the question of the present: how to survive, while waiting for the aftermath—and how to get there? There is also the question of tomorrow: how can the tourism industry recover from a global crisis, knowing that transport, the essential pillar of travel, is also its Achilles heel as a vector for cross-border transmission of the disease?

Drawing on the experiences identified in the literature during the pandemic (notably [18]), this study provides an overview of the adaptation strategies deployed by tourism industries around the world to maintain, at the very least, leisure travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. It aims to identify resilient avenues in the face of future health crises.

To this end, the study:

1. juxtaposes the conditions necessary for tourism with the health challenges of a pandemic;

2. identifies the conditions required for business recovery;

3. lists responses from the tourism industries.

2. Methodology and study limits

Aware that each tourism sector requires specific solutions, the author has chosen an inductive approach—reasoning that moves from the specific to the general [19]. Thus, “from reported or observed facts […], the researcher arrives at an idea by generalisation rather than by verification against a pre-established theoretical framework”, underline Blais and Martineau ([19], p. 5). The study draws its data from the story of the crisis and the measures put in place by the different types of actors (governments, entrepreneurs, support service providers, etc.), in order to draw generalisations applicable to the whole, as far as possible. At this stage of the crisis, the present study has opted for findings based on grey literature, i.e. press articles, which abound on tourism issues, illuminated by previously published studies on the conditions necessary for tourism development.

A single study cannot claim to be able to bring all these lessons together—each player and each environment has its own context and particularities. Beyond these micro considerations, however, there are macro principles that can provide clues as to the scenarios to be envisaged in the event of the next global health crisis. The article summarises the types of adaptations employed by the tourism industry in a context of viable cohabitation with the evil that requires it to review the shape of its products and services—in short, its modes of operation, while recognising the volatility of scenarios in the event of a new virus with unprecedented effects.

3. Conditions for tourism

A remedy for the alienation of industrialised and post-industrial societies, tourism involves moving away from one’s domestic and familiar world to a foreign, national or international host environment. This displacement from one’s mastered universe leads to a loss of reference points, which, in the context of the support provided by the host, encourages the renewal of mind and body—the vacation. Six conditions must be met in order to carry out a tourist activity:

1. the existence of an attraction (which stimulates the desire, the dream, the project and finally the decision to go);

2. a discretionary budget (what is left in the budget after you have taken care of your basic needs: housing, food, etc.: to cover the financial costs of your dreams): to cover the financial costs of your dreams)

3. an infrastructure to support the dream (transportation, lodging, field guides, etc.);

4. paid leave (time off from regular and funded activities)

5. health (being able to get around and enjoy your stay away from home); and

6. safety (guaranteeing healthy physical and psychological conditions for the trip) and its perception [20]

When these conditions are met, the majority of people can indulge in leisure travel (tourism). Tourism allows people to renew themselves through immersion in new environments and the realisation of new experiences involving varying degrees of socialisation. This socialisation inevitably requires physical proximity (proximity of service) and interpersonal exchanges, ideal for the transmission of viruses that can lead to disease. However, by compromising four of the conditions necessary for travel (health and safety, loss of discretionary budget and paid leave, for many), the 2020–2023 COVID-19 pandemic has forced a halt to all activities requiring physical proximity. Tourism could only resume under certain conditions (6), as set out by the World Health Organisation (Box 1) [21].

ONE: transmission must be controlled.; TWO: capacity of the healthcare system to detect, test, isolate and treat each case and trace contacts.; THREE: minimising the risk of epidemics in specific locations, such as healthcare facilities and nursing homes.; FOUR: implementation of preventive measures in workplaces, schools and other places essential to the population.; FIVE: control of import risks.; SIX: raising awareness and involving the population to equip them with the means to adapt to the “new normal”.; Source: adapted from WHO [21].

Box 1.

Six criteria for lifting containment restrictions of the 2020–2023 pandemic.

Criteria 2, 4, 5 and 6 were particularly relevant to tourism. The second involved guaranteeing the presence of an unsaturated healthcare system capable of treating all patients. The precautionary principle thus requires each tourist to be a responsible citizen, so as not to create or contribute to situations that could exert pressure on the health system of their territory, or that of a receptive environment, by risk of importing the disease (criterion 5). Criteria 4 addressed the issue of space organisation (including ventilation, as we would learn) to prevent proximity contact and the transmission of the virus. Criteria 6 stressed the necessity of population awareness of the risks and the precautionary behaviours to be adopted.

Those steps were required as tourism is a giant with feet of clay: it is sensitive to the vagaries of economic, social, political and health moods. In the absence of a pharmaceutical solution that could be administered to vast swathes of the human population, tourism became virtually impossible across borders. With the arrival of a pharmaceutical solution (1 year into the COVID-19 pandemic, at the end of 2021), cohabitation with the virus replaced the wish for community immunity, which would not come [22]. Community immunity requires a sufficiently high number of immunised individuals to limit contagion of the disease to less than one person per agent of transmission (i.e., an R0—reproduction zero—of less than 1). This rate varies according to the degree of transmissibility of the disease. Rawaf et al. [23] predicted nine (9) waves of transmission (as of fall 2022, 8 waves of COVID-19 had been recorded in many countries [24, 25]). Economic recovery therefore took place against a backdrop of partial containment including tourism market bubbles, i.e. by agreement between specific populations where contagion was under control, if not limited, creating a gigantic diplomatic and transportation headache. The challenges facing the tourism industry were therefore manifold: restoring customer safety and confidence by adapting services and infrastructures to the new health regulations, while ensuring the sustainability of operations, without having to rely on the profit margins enjoyed by some companies up to 2020. The answers would come from the resilience of some and the imagination of others.

4. Crisis management

Sooner or later, every unit, a group, a society, a company or an organisation is bound to experience a crisis. A crisis can be defined as “a process in which an unusual, unexpected, or the least-expected situation occurs in a certain period.” ([26], pp. 2–3). Moreover, this situation temporarily disrupts the proper functioning of the unit, requiring an active response on its part. There are several levels of crisis, from minor to major, including catastrophe—“[an] unexpected discontinuity in an otherwise continuous system,” ([27], p. 255) which leads to irreparable loss. To survive, the unit must reinvent itself through fundamental change. The crisis evokes the setback or possible setback for the unit due to major, often unexpected elements against which it is unprepared or ill-prepared. It requires the unit to react to choices of a behavioural, ethical or moral nature: resilience. This response may even call into question the organisation of the unit itself. As Ritchie et al. ([28]: p. 203) point out, understanding the nature of a crisis is important. However, it is even more important to know how to manage it in order to mitigate its impact on the organisation and its short—and long-term development. A unit unable to manage a crisis is bound to disappear and be replaced by another. “[T]he real challenge is to recognise crises in a timely fashion and implement coping strategies to limit their damage,” argues Darling et al. [29].

Two elements are particularly important in this management: communication (the message and how it is delivered) and perception (how events and the message are received and understood by the public affected by the crisis). In tourism, communication helps destinations both to limit the negative impacts of a crisis and, at the same time, to recover from the difficulties that have arisen ([28], p. 203). However, there is a third element: the revival of the service damaged by the crisis.

Crisis scenario planning can help prevent a system or organisation from imploding. It requires cold thinking and consideration of the responses to be given to different situations.¹ These situations can be considered individually or in combination, i.e., a multidimensional crisis. These include crises of an intra-organisational nature—within an organisation—and extra-organisational crises—external to the organisation, but whose effects have a direct impact on it. In the case of the 2020–2023 health crisis, it began extra-organisational and rapidly became intra-organisational.

Responses to crises and disasters, although conceivable, can never be fully planned. Actors can prepare themselves to prevent the implosion of their system or organisation. This means considering and thinking, in the cold light of day, about responses to different scenarios. These include crises (internal to the organisation) and catastrophes (external to the organisation). One can respond to a disaster insofar as the players still have the resources to do so, i.e., the supply networks (services and raw materials). If these are destroyed, or if access to them is cut off, disaster management inevitably requires help from outside the affected area. The organisation must therefore develop mutual aid networks in anticipation of disasters while managing its own (implicitly internal) crises. A crisis takes on unprecedented proportions when it affects both the actor and its networks. In a way, this was the COVID-19 pandemic scenario.

Any crisis calls into question the notion of safety—the means available to a player to deal with risks, in addition to those resulting from bad intentions (in which case it is a question of security). The same applies to tourism. However, the usual security measures deployed in the tourism industry proved useless against the virus, as its players had mainly invested their efforts, since September 2001, in security measures targeting criminal activity—crimes against people and property. In terms of health safety, the tourism industry’s actions were often limited to that of premises and equipment in the face of environmental and behavioural risks. With the exception of food hygiene and vaccination requirements for some destinations, nothing really addressed health safety.

For tourists, safety is a question of both perception—whether or not they are in danger (target) or exposed to danger (collateral victim)—and evaluation of the actual risk. For example, states afflicted by social or even armed conflict may continue to receive tourists if the crisis does not affect the area where holidaymakers are concentrated. In the case of a health crisis, few places can claim not to be at risk, since the tourist—the beneficiary—is himself the potential vehicle for disease transmission. Kanlayanasukho and Veuthey ([31], p. 108) propose two types of crisis management response:

1. the operational response—the taking of immediate decisions and actions to manage the effects of a given crisis on customers and suppliers (it includes the financial response, which aims to compensate actors affected by the crisis situation and encourage the return of tourists, the crisis over); and.

2. the communication response, which aims to put in place measures to mitigate current and future losses.

Each of these responses requires actions. In operational terms alone, we can summarise the strategies available to tour operators to recover from a crisis as five:

1. shifting the offer from one receptive environment to another;

2. relaunching the product through a communication campaign ([31], p. 102);

3. market segmentation ([31], p. 102);

4. complete destination renewal; and

5. offer diversification.

For rapid and effective responses, these strategies need to be developed in advance of the disruption, bearing in mind that each crisis is unique and distinct from one another. Consequently, no matter how well thought-out, risk management responses will need to be revised during the crisis. In tourism, the aim is to shorten the lean period while working to eliminate the risk of destructuring. Based on the study of crises since 2000, the World Travel & Tourism Council and Global Rescue calculate an average recovery time of 11.5 months following a terrorist attack (2–42 months, depending on the scale of the attack); 16.2 months following natural disasters (1–93 months, depending on the scale) and 22.2 months following socio-political unrest (10–44.9 months, depending on the scale) ([32], pp. 5–9). For health crises, the average time is 19.4 months (ranging from 10 to 34.9 months, depending on severity), resulting in economic losses of 45–55 billion dollars ([32], pp. 5–9). In the case of the COVID-19 crisis, Gombault et al. ([15], 80) estimated in 2020 that it would take up to 3 years, or 2023, to return to “normality”—a prediction nearly right yet not completely fulfilled as of 2024. Hence, it is important for the tourism industry to be better prepared to withstand the blows, which would not be possible without the tourists themselves participating (financially) in this anticipation.

5. Responses from governments and the tourism industry

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the sanitary measures adopted by many States (social distancing, disinfection of hands and contact areas, establishment of space partitions with Plexiglas, and most importantly, the wearing of face coverings) were primarily aimed at preventing the spread of the virus droplets during verbal communication. It was also a question of restoring the citizens’ confidence to pursue their essential movements. Health authorities started by re-establishing a form of security in domestic life—grocery stores and other supply services, medical visits, schools, etc. Once tested, sanitary measures could then be extended to non-essential activities, such as tourism.

In order to resume their activities, the tourism industries needed to reconcile the conditions required for travel with the restrictions imposed (Figure 1). The relaxation of the sanitary protection measures recommended by the World Health Organisation from 2020 to 2022 was only possible if a transmission rate in the population of less than 1 was achieved, i.e. if one infected person contaminated less than one contact. And yet, the death toll inflicted by the virus—6 to 16% in G7 countries [33]—discriminated primarily against the elderly (aged 70 and over—a large segment of active tourists), but also younger retirees, those with a discretionary budget and time so essential to tourism. Hence, time became a significant part of the safety equation [34]. Herein laid the challenge of reactivating the economy, tourism and its industries, while maintaining social distancing measures. Should it fail, it would reignite the contagion, with a return to confinement to reduce the number of casualties.

Figure 1.

Links to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the six conditions necessary for tourism. Source: author’s conception.

Tourism recovery requires coordinated actions by several groups of players at all levels: political and administrative, local, national and international (opening of borders, creation and distribution of aid funds, financial support from the state and charities), insurance companies (coverage of pandemic-related risks, including care required in the event of contracting the disease while travelling, and, what is more, abroad), the medical sector (health care, capacity to respond to demand) and, last but not least, the tourism industries themselves—transport, accommodation, catering and attractions, according to the contextual guidelines laid down by the public health authorities of both visitor-generating and host-receiving environments.

In the case of the 2020–2023 pandemic, the focus was lifting the lockdown, which was applied gradually according to the type of service and production method. In tourism, deconfinement was first allowed on a regional and national basis, according to the health status of host communities and tourist-generating regions, by type of activity (and age group). The same process was extended at the international level. The aim was to align deconfinement measures with the conditions set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) (Figure 2) [21]. Gradually, a number of tourism services and environments have been able to meet the World Health Organisation deconfinement requirements (taken over by national public safety authorities). But some key sectors faced significant obstacles due to:

1. infrastructural considerations, notably with regard to space (cabin and passenger compartment) for collective mobility (aeroplane, train, coach and ship),

2. border closures or prohibitions on access to certain areas and territories, and.

3. the age and health of the clientele and host populations.

Figure 2.

Factors detrimental to tourism and conditions conducive to its recovery. Source: author’s conception.

For tourists, safety is a question of perception—whether or not they are in danger (target) or exposed to danger (collateral victim). For example, territories afflicted by social or even armed conflict may continue to receive tourists if the crisis does not affect the area where holidaymakers are concentrated. In the case of the health crisis, no place could claim not to be at risk, since the tourist himself was the object of virus transmission.

The recovery scenarios considered by the various tourism industries during the pandemic were linked to the containment measures established by the governments. States’ strategies differed according to whether they decided (a) to let things go without restrictive measures (as in the case of Russia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Sweden, etc.) or (b) to partially lockdown the population and its economy (USA); or (c) to completely isolate and lockdown its borders while maintaining essential services (Canada, Québec, France, etc.). Two approaches emerged: mitigation (attenuation of the disease or its effects to make them tolerable) and eradication. The more aggressive approach to eradication has involved the rapid closure of borders, the rapid detection of the virus through mass screening and the use of technological applications (including sensitive data on the movement of citizens). These include Australia, China, Iceland, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and New Zealand. What these countries have in common is that they are both geographically and politically insular. They have managed to control community transmission, enabling a return to normal life—at least, at certain times.

Three scenarios for the onset of a crisis then emerge:

1. no containment—business as usual, with no mandatory risk mitigation measures (and risks to the healthcare system);

2. complete containment—until a medical or pharmaceutical solution is discovered to protect the healthcare system, with known socio-economic consequences;

3. partial containment (managing the number of people in each other’s presence)—with the introduction of infrastructural, temporal (curfew) and health risk management measures (implying that certain types of services and activities cannot be permitted).

It is possible to group together the measures deployed around the world as identified in the grey and scientific literature to mitigate the effects of the health crisis on tourism (Table 1). Hudson [18] provides an interesting overview with case studies from all around the globe, yet without synthesis. States and tourism industry players responded to the pandemic crisis first and foremost with information on the development of the crisis. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) then proved indispensable for managing socialisation in public places and enabling a maximum number of exchange networks to be maintained without physical proximity contact. At the same time, promotional campaigns on social media enabled the most imaginative destinations to remain “virtual” in people’s minds.

				Implementation authority
				Governments	Tourism industry	Tourists
Communication responses	Information		• Need to keep the public informed	X
	Use of ICTs		• Information and communication technologies (ICTs) to eliminate contacts – facial, voice, and fingerprint recognition (for the purposes of personal identification, contactless payment, registration, access to services via smartphones, tablets, room keys, etc.).		X
			• Use of ICTs (paid videoconferencing) to present destinations or experiences.		X
			• Installation of high-speed Internet services to promote working vacations at destination.	X	X
	Promotion		• Promotional campaigns to keep the destination in the imagination of markets (notably via cinema-tourism)		X
			• Use of virtual reality to promote destinations without travel		X
			• Vouchers to postpone cancelled trips		X
Operational responses	Health	Screening	• Health screening (temperature taking – by thermometer or infrared camera, nasal or buccal sampling)		X
			• Medical monitoring by integrating medical teams into tourist accommodation companies.		X
			• Telemedicine (telephone consultation)	X
		Vaccination	• Mass vaccination of the population (from those most to least vulnerable to the disease)	X
		Health measures	• Social distancing (widened with disease progression)		X	X
			• Wearing a face cover		X	X
			• Hand disinfection		X
			• Surface disinfection		X
			• Disinfection of shoe soles (some jurisdictions)		X
			• Restricted socialisation (per bubble)	X
			• Restriction on automobile traffic (time and number of passengers)	X		X
			• Curfew	X
		Certification	• Adoption of sanitary passes (“passport”) with QR code (application by industries)	X	X
	Administrative measures		• Border closures	X
			• VISA modification to encourage telecommuting tourists to stay (exempt from local taxes)	X
			• Cooperation between neighbouring states to promote pandemic control	X
	Financial response (assistance) to companies		• State blitz survey to determine immediate needs	X
			• Business aid/wage aid (in waves, for adjustments as needed)	X
			• Loan interest rate relief/suspension	X
			• Relief/suspension of loan payments	X
			• Interest-free or low-interest loan/guarantee programme	X
			• Business tax relief/suspension	X
			• Tax relief/suspension to citizens on domestic travel purchases	X
			• Salary reduction for employees		X
	Financial response (aid) for labour		• Employee/unemployed financial assistance (per cycle, for adjustments as needed)	X	X
			• Economic support (for workforce training and retraining)	X
			• Economic support (for training and requalification of workforce to other tourism jobs or employment sectors)	X
			• Relief/suspension of contributions to social programmes (taxes)
	Service		• Change in the nature of service (takeaway food from restaurants rather than served in the dining room, end of self-service in catering, abandonment of tourist service in favour of other types of service, etc.).		X
			• Change in clientele	X	X
			• Policies to protect passengers in the event of transport cancellations		X

Table 1.

Measures taken worldwide during the health crisis to mitigate its effects on tourism.

Source: Compiled by the author.

In Iceland, for example, some tour operators have created wildlife excursions in order to broadcast live, via social media, commented experiences, in English, to an international audience (Figure 3). The interaction between customers and the tour operator, through exchanges of comments and the affixing of emotion icons (hearts, “likes”), enables the entrepreneur to hope to turn a few social media followers into prospective customers. Numerous destinations, particularly in film tourism and for museum exhibitions, used that approach.

Figure 3.

Using social media to broadcast a live whale-watching tour (circle) to promote a tourism product to a prospective clientele around the world. Source: Screenshot taken by the author during a live session on Facebook.

Pandemic management required operational measures. In terms of health, these included screening for the virus and the disease, vaccination, application of sanitary measures to the general population, and certification of citizens’ vaccination status as soon as the pharmaceutical response appeared. At the same time, governments deployed administrative measures to contain the virus, on the one hand, and to support households and businesses with financial aid, on the other. The tourism industry came to a virtual standstill, or had to rethink its functions—accommodation was sometimes used to relieve overburdened hospitals, or even as a depot for medical equipment. Some tourist accommodations offered their units for long-term healthcare, for employees who opted to telework from another location, provided inter-regional transport was available or permitted.

As soon as sanitary measures enabled economic activity to reopen, even partially, tourism was back in full swing. We then saw the deployment of new responses at both communication and operational levels (Table 2). In terms of communication, the strategies remained the same: keeping the public informed as the situation evolved and as to what was now permitted, or what restrictions were to be maintained. States had to play a balancing act in the face of grumbling, as certain freedoms were allowed while others remained prohibited, in terms of both socialisation and services.

			Implementation authority
			Governments	Tourism industry	Tourists
Communication responses	Information	• Keeping the public informed	X
	Use of ICTs	• Use of QR code for non-tactile services (via smartphone); (tickets, person ID, room keys, restaurant menus, etc.).		X
		• Videoconferencing telephony		X
	Promotion	• Change in appeal strategy (promotion)	X
		• Use of different types of celebrities (artistic, sporting and influencers) to promote the destination.	X	X
		• Special offers/discounts (free nights, single price for unlimited domestic transport for a fixed period)	X	X
		• Focus on national/local clientele		X
Operational responses	Security	• Adoption of regulations on visiting conditions (temperature screening of travellers).	X
		• Adoption of “bubbles” and “corridors” between markets:	X
		◦ depending on how they manage contagion
		◦ by limited access: by air, land or sea
		• Relaxation as quickly as possible of sanitary barriers to entry into a territory	X
		• International recognition agreements on health passes (depending on vaccines)	X
		• Imposition of travel insurance covering COVID-19 and its variants.	X
		• Inclusion in travel packages of health insurance by destination.	X
		• 24 h between the passage of guests in rooms in accommodation	X
		• Imposition of quarantine periods on return from international travel (duration varies according to state and severity of epidemic)
		• Cooperation between medial teams and hospitality services (accommodation)	X	X
	Health measures	• Capacity restrictions		X
		• Handling restrictions:		X
		◦ withdrawal of cash payments		X
		◦ disinfection by electrostatic gun and other ecological agents		X
		• Vaccination and certifications (QR code passes)	X
		• 72-hour screening (test before crossing an international border)	X
		• Use of robots to provide certain services (site disinfection, meal delivery, etc.)		X
		• Ban on mixing (foreign) tourists with the local population		X
		• Maintenance of vacant rooms (in case of need to isolate tourists).		X
		• 24 h between the passage of customers in rooms in accommodation		X
		• insertion of Plexiglas dividers between user spaces		X
	Administrative	• Policies to protect passengers in the event of transport cancellations	X	X
	Financial response (assistance) to companies	• Fund to support creation and innovation (new tourism products/experiences)	X
		• Workforce training fund	X
		• Business recovery fund by sector	X
		• Shifting weekend vacations to weekdays	X
		• Preferential transport rates for local population (mobility incentive)	X
	Services and products	• Development of niche sectors favouring sanitary measures (physical distancing in particular) such as outdoor/nature tourism		X

Table 2.

Measures taken around the world to boost tourism recovery.

Source: Compiled by the author.

Many destinations turned to the local market. This was the case with Norway [35] and Quebec [36], for example, two states which launched domestic marketing campaigns at the end of April and May 2020 to promote their offer and encourage local tourists to discover their own heritage (a solution that is both compensatory and adaptive). At the operational level, this implied new health safety measures. In the absence of medicine against the virus, the first summer, the Québec State encouraged people to rent cottages and bringing sufficient food supplies to prevent contamination of the local communities at their points of service. Many communities far from the main tourism centres would benefit from the influx of local tourists, often with unprecedented success, especially as vaccination allowed less restrictions. Day trips, otherwise known as “staycations”, were also encouraged while waiting for the upturn.

With vaccines arriving in 2021, extending tourism to foreign markets required to obtain vaccination certification and flight or ship pre-departure temperature readings, adding to the administrative burden of the stay. International travel requires determination and patience. If tourism was to be revived smoothly, it was also necessary to restrict capacity (both in transport and at destination). Operators and hosts alike were required to review the layout of the space, keeping in mind the people’s way of moving about inside buildings, disinfection of premises and even their bedroom quarantine for a few hours after customers have passed through. All these measures raised issues of manpower management, food supplies and profitability.

For destinations largely or exclusively dependent on international tourists (often sun destinations in emerging countries), the crisis continued. Based on data on the control of the spread of the virus, states established bubbles between privileged markets (usually neighbours but also between states of different continents), allowing the most risk-tolerant tourists to reclaim air travel and cruises. The first cruises took place only along the coasts of one state, with customers from the same country and without stopovers. The upturn was marked here and there by cases of contagion, illustrating that taking the temperature of tourists before departure was no guarantee of a Covid-free trip [37]. These sporadic contagions required the tracing of travellers who may have been in contact, and their eventual isolation, applied with varying degrees of effectiveness depending on the state. Not all individuals—tourists and citizens alike—had the health of their fellow citizens at heart. At this stage, economic assistance programmes for businesses and citizens are generally extended. In some cases, rapid training programmes are added to help the workforce retrain for the job market once the crisis is over.

Not all attractions are equal in the face of a health crisis. In the case of the 2020–2023 pandemic, some tour operators showed originality by revising the formula of the experiences they offer (open-air cinema in nature parks, for example). Nature tourism gained in popularity as a self-sufficient activity. It often leads to overtourism, which has negative impacts on natural resource management. Where groups remained a necessity, and in emerging environments where medical or pharmaceutical treatment was inadequately supervised—the various vaccines on offer were not all recognised by the States, imposing other administrative barriers—some attractions and destinations suffered from the loss of most needed revenues.

6. Lessons learned

In the spring of 2023, the COVID-19 pandemic slowly faded away. As the World Health Organisation (WHO) lifted the health emergency on May 5, the world’s economies began to breathe a sigh of relief [38]. The tourism industries are now drawing lessons from the reactions and adaptations developed—albeit often improvised—to counter the effects of a health crisis on a scale never before imagined.

These reactions and adaptations can be broken down into five general phases (normality, beginning of the crisis, during the crisis, end of the crisis) (Figure 4). Depending on whether the problem is non-recurring, recurring or permanent, various solutions emerge. In a state of “normality”, operators of all kinds need to anticipate possible crises (those already experienced—recessions, socio-political crises, climatic and natural crises, cultural crises, criminal and terrorist crises—and now health crises). This means anticipating possible crisis scenarios and emergency plans, involving local and national authorities and the entire supply and support chain. The aim is to have a choice of possible reactions and actions in the event of the introduction of a disruptive agent into the socio-economic environment. The weakest link in any crisis management process is generally found upstream, insofar as the problem must be considered in advance by the stakeholders. However, small businesses often lack the resources, expertise, and time to do this, and they devote most of their efforts to the profitability of the moment.

Figure 4.

The five possible reaction times and adaptations of tourism experience providers due to crises. Source: Author’s conception.

The responses deployed by the tourism industries to the 2020–2023 health crisis can be broken down into three types of problems: non-recurring, recurring and permanent. A non-recurring problem generally occurs once or twice. It calls for short-term solutions. These are generally compensatory solutions in monetary terms (credit on the next visit, reimbursement or cancellation of activity). If they persist, the company must simultaneously suspend the product while promoting it, to keep it in the market’s thoughts—a major lesson of the pandemic—and encourage its rapid relaunch when the crisis is over. Conversely, the product must be abandoned if the practice becomes permanently impossible in the long term (as is the case with climate change for many winter practices, for example).

When the problem becomes recurrent, or the crisis drags on too long (as in the case of pandemic 2020–2023), adaptive solutions (temporal, spatial, conceptual, experiential and entrepreneurial) are required. The temporal solution involves temporarily suspending the product or its experience. If the conditions necessary for its realisation are available by revising the organisation of the site, a physical reorganisation is required. The spatial solution may also involve moving the activity to another receptive environment to meet the criteria for safe execution. If necessary, the concept or form of the product or service can be revised. One experience can also be substituted for another.

In the event of health crises, pharmaceutical solutions may help restore normal functioning, enabling adaptive solutions to offer sufficient entrepreneurial and experiential resilience. In the case of disruptions that become permanent, the long-term effects of climate change are a case in point, and long-term solutions are required. These often involve innovation, i.e., improving a service or product by adding new elements. This can involve technological solutions (as during the COVID-19 pandemic, with visits to tourist sites via videoconferencing), temporal solutions (visits by appointment or by modifying service hours), conceptual solutions (by modifying the content of the experience, often in reference to its mythology, as in the case of climate change with snow) or, ultimately, by creating entirely new tourist experiences.

6.1 What did not work

Despite the many solutions put forward by governments and companies, there have also been failures—ideas that have not come to fruition. In general, governments intervened quickly to inject emergency funds to help companies survive. Certain sectors were initially excluded—air transport and cruising, only to receive aid in extremis (aviation only, as shipowners often register their vessels in tax havens). In the case of labour, the promised aid was often very uneven, even within the same jurisdiction, as in the case of smaller players—often individual or family businesses, whose cash flow is often extremely imitative. Since self-employed or seasonal workers are often less well-trained, they were the first to be laid off, finding themselves without recourse because they had not worked long enough. Without qualifications, it is difficult for them to work remotely ([18], p. 144).

In emerging countries, many companies and their employees live on daily earnings: without cash inflows, it is the end ([18], p. 146). Because of corruption and lack of trust in the central state, many citizens work outside the formal economy, escaping the tax system and, at the same time, state social programmes ([18], p. 74). In these situations, the pause in the economy and the social restrictions (mobility, proximity, etc.) introduced to halt the spread of the deadly virus could quickly lead to psychological distress, which in turn could lead to suicide. This shows how important it is for governments to combat corruption and abuse (unjustified expenditure, for example), which are partly responsible for the cynicism of citizens, leading to a shift away from the formal economy (and towards the informal economy).

Anti-vaccination campaigns, which were generally supported by people with little or no information, slowed down efforts to mitigate the pandemic. Sometimes, contradictory messages from the authorities contributed to misinformation. Pressure from the public to reopen the economy too quickly to foreign markets may have proved counter-productive when the relaxation of health safety rules made the destination a super-propagator.

The use of smartphones for a multitude of applications, thanks to QR codes, has encouraged “contactless” services. Already well established among young people under the age of 50, this technology has at the same time helped to isolate some of the elderly clientele, for whom this new way of interacting remains inaccessible due to sight problems, hand dexterity or other forms of a form of disability.

Another flaw was the neglect of environmental considerations in the aid programmes developed. Stopping tourism has had a positive impact on natural ecosystems in urban areas. However, in “wild” environments, the lack of income has affected the resources allocated to conservation, particularly in Africa ([18], p. 200).

7. Conclusion

From relatively localised ailments before the development of mass transportation, viruses are now increasingly called upon to disrupt economic and social activity on a globalised planet. There are thought to be at least 1.7 million unknown viruses in the world, of which 540,000 to 850,000 “have the capacity to infect humans.” ([39], p. 5). Of these, 60 to 75% of new human infectious diseases (Ebola, Zika and influenza, AIDS, COVID-19) are zoonoses, i.e., derived from pathogens transmitted to humans by animals [40, 41]. Among the reservoirs most conducive to transfer to humans are mammals (bats, rodents, primates, birds)—especially seabirds—and farm animals (especially pigs, camels and poultry) ([39], p. 5), many of which come into contact with tourists as part of nature, agricultural or food tourism activities. From epidemic (local transmission) to pandemic (continental or global transmission), there is only one step: mobility.

The lessons learned from the 2020 to 2023 Covid pandemic can be divided into three main phases. Firstly, the world economy was brought to a temporary halt in order to prioritise the stabilisation of the health crisis. Even a partial resumption of tourism activity remained dependent on a variety of means that were not welcome in most cultures, such as physical distancing, behavioural (respiratory) hygiene, and physical and technological adaptations. The arrival of pharmaceutical solutions did not solve everything; instead, it brought much-needed relief to healthcare systems by mitigating the effects of the virus.

A second phase followed, known as partial cohabitation with the virus, in which strict rules were applied to mitigate or even reduce the potential for propagation in the populations the least at risk. When this second period was successful, the third phase could follow: a complete economic recovery, that is, a return to a new normality. This reality remains fragile insofar as globalisation continues to accelerate not only physical contact between humans but also original experiences with exotic fauna, which is also capable of transmitting viruses.

Despite the lessons learned from the pandemic, nothing is certain. The recent warning from the World Health Organisation [42] about the possibility of the H1N1 virus (avian flu) mutating into humans is a reminder of the vulnerability of human health to viruses and the strong possibility of another pandemic.

As each virus has its own specific characteristics, the adaptations developed during the COVID-19 pandemic are in no way a guarantee of the measures that will need to be put in place for the next health crisis. But the lessons of principle remain valid: the need for public health watch and health networks equipped in terms of manpower and operational capacities, the rapid reaction time of authorities at the first signs of crisis, and the quality of responses (support actions) from the population and businesses. This will require reserves to pay salaries and rents for several weeks or even months, which should directly appeal to tourists to pay more for their trip, something that conventional mass tourism, based on economies of scale, has yet to learn.