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The 2009 global tourism crisis

The financial world crisis is already affecting every sector in economy, especially international tourism. The World Tourism Organization, an institution belonging to the ONU in Madrid, forecasts a slight decline in international tourism during the 2009, compared with the 2008 recordings. This turn down in tourism demand would be the result of the financial and economic collapse, which has affected principally Europe, Latin-American and the Caribbean. However, the Americas are expected to have more tourist influx than Europe. In the case of the Americas, due to the strength of traffic to the USA up to August and the favourable performance of most Central and Southern American destinations. European tourism has suffered a severe International tourism decline (especially those coming from The United States and Latin-American countries) for the dollar weakness compared to the euro. Nevertheless, not every future forecasts are negative. Even though, in the short time, the annual International tourism will face a standstill, the long term forecasts seem to be much more positive.

According to general perspectives, the International tourism is expected to stagnate or even decline a 2%. The OMT says that the annual increase in the international tourism was of 2%, 5% less than the previous 4 years, which reached the 7%. Even though the first half of 2008 recorded a growth of 5%, the second half of 2008 showed an abrupt shit in trend recording a negative growth of 1%.

One of the main reasons of the international tourist crisis was the price raise of oil (which resulted in an increase in the airfreight) what caused severe economic troubles to air firms and tour operators. In fact, many of these firms had to go on into liquidation for not being able to take care of expenses and for the lack of bank support.

Europe was the first to experiment the crisis with a negative growth of 3% during the second half of the 2008. The pressing financial crisis plus the lack of confidence of the people provoked by the mortgage crisis and the dollar depression are the reasons for the decline in tourist influx, besides those people who travelled reduced noticeably their budget. The European Commission affirmed that the businessman and the consumer’s Žconfidence had backed down in July. Despite of a slight improvement in august, the consumers’ confidence had not stop backing down since September 2007, recording a fall of 35.1 points.

On the other hand, the crisis seem to have been merciful with the Pacific - Asia region, where positive results are expected, yet the growth rate will be inferior compared with previous years. The best results in 2008 where found in the Middle East with an increase of 11%, Africa with an increase of 4% and the Americas with an increase of 4%. Nevertheless, the long term predictions are more encouraging. The Global Tourism Organization forecasts that this fall will be compensated by the year 2020, when is expected a tourist international influx of 1.6 billions of people. The three regions which are forecasted to be the most visited are in the first place Europe, with 717 millions of tourist, in the second place East Pacific Asia, with 397 millions of tourists and in the third place the Americas, with 282 millions of tourists.

Form a more positive perspective, in can be deduced that even though there will be a standstill or even a negative growth in international tourism, it has to be bearded in mind that we are talking about “growth”. That is to say there is going to be the same growth or may be less growth those previous years but still there will be growth. In consequence, this decline in growth should not affect importantly this economic sector. Furthermore, these perspectives seem to affect the immediate future, leavening the door open for a remarkable international tourist growth by the 2020.