End Of 2024, WTO Calls World Tourism Almost Recovered From Pandemic

Illustration of family vacations (Freepic)

JAKARTA - World tourism is reported to have improved throughout 2024, after being hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of world tourism visits is even claimed to have almost recovered by 100 percent.

Quoting from Oman Oberserver, Monday, December 16, 2024, around 1.1 billion tourists traveled internationally in the first nine months of 2024. The number of visits shows that the global tourism sector has recovered to 98 percent after the pandemic.

The tourism barometer released by the World Trade Organization (WTO) states that the full recovery from the biggest crisis in the history of the tourism sector is expected to occur by the end of 2024. Although it is undeniable that there are challenges for other sectors, such as economics, geopoliticals, and climate.

The recovery of the tourism sector also appears significant with most areas exceeding the arrivals of 2019, in the period January to September 2024. This number shows positive results in international tourism revenues, with most destinations posting double-digit growth compared to 2019, before the pandemic.

"The rapid growth seen in tourism revenue is very banic news for the worldwide economy," said WTO Secretary General Zurab Pololikashvili.

"Tourist spending fact grew stronger than the number of arrivals, had a direct impact on millions of jobs and small businesses and made a significant contribution to the balance of payments and tax revenues in many countries," he added.

One of them is in the Middle East region. Tourism visits to this area increased by more than 29 percent, compared to 2019.

This increase in tourism in the Middle East continues to be in a positive trend to date, and is expected to continue going forward. A total of 3.2 million visitors were recorded as arriving in the country in the first ten months of 2024.