UAE tourism is the most affected by the novel Coronavirus

Observers confirm that the tourism around the world has suffered a severe blow because of the measures taken by countries to reduce the spread of the Coronavirus, and that the losses of the tourism sector have been unprecedented for decades.

The tourism sector in the UAE is the most affected at the level of the Gulf states, as it contributed to the country’s GDP in the year 2019, by about $45 billion.

According to observers, it can be observed that the contribution of tourism to the Emirati income is three times greater compared to the contribution of tourism to the income of the Saudis, even though the Kingdom hosts Hajj and Umrah as a religious tourism.

The tourism and aviation sectors are the economic sectors most affected by the outbreak of the new Coronavirus around the world.

But the tourism sector is more affected compared to the aviation sector, which will not stop at all, as it is expected that air freight and some civil travel flights will not be affected.

It is expected that tourism will collapse completely in a large number of countries in the world, some of which the tourism sector is considered an important source of its national income, such as the Emirates.

And it is not only related to the spread of the pandemic, but also the curfews, emergencies, and domestic quarantine that many countries around the world have begun to implement, which leads to the closure of ports to domestic tourism as well.

Estimates prevail that losses expected at one trillion dollar for the global tourism sector during the year 2020 is highly likely, unless there is a positive turn of events and scientists have been able to find a vaccine or a drug that greatly reduces the spread of the pandemic, a relatively excluded scenario as recognized by the World Health Organization.

The World Tourism Organization expected that the sector’s losses, which have now reached $77 billion, are expected to reach the threshold of $180 billion, at the end of next April.

The biggest problem relates to the loss of jobs for workers in the tourism sector, and the loss of job opportunities and projects indirectly related to tourism, and here we are talking about numbers that exceed the previous numbers.

Suffice it to mention that the International Labor Organization expected that 25 million people will lose their jobs due to the outbreak of the pandemic, a large part of whom are mainly workers in the tourism sector.

And if the likely scenarios circulating among international experts are realized that finding a vaccine for the pandemic and containing it completely may take place until the fall or perhaps the end of the year. This means that the tourism sector will suffer the largest setback in its history, perhaps since the Second World War.