Fast vaccination for global tourism recovery stressed
Speakers at a webinar emphasised the need of fast vaccination and urged all nations to work side by side to fight the on-going coronavirus pandemic for the recovery of global tourism.
Covid-19 has caused a significant impact on the tourism industry in South Asia and governments and private sectors of this region must work together to keep tourism alive and going for the global economy, they added.
The call was made at an online seminar titled ‘Tourism for Global Recovery: A South Asian Perspective’ organised by the regional office of the Bonn-based Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF South Asia), said a press release.
The webinar discussed the obstacles to the tourism industry caused by the pandemic and how to recover it on a global scale from a South Asian perspective.
Country representative of FNF Bangladesh Najmul Hossain moderated the event while founder and chief executive of Journey Plus in Bangladesh Taufiq Rahman and CEO of Simdi Group in Maldives Mariyam Shakeela spoke on the occasion.
Frank Müller-Rosentritt, member of Bundestag (Germany's lower house of parliament), was the keynote speaker.
The online seminar began with an insightful speech from Frank. He shared his opinion on how Covid-19 has changed the whole infrastructure of the tourism industry globally.
He also gave a statistical view on how this pandemic severely affected this industry. He stated, “World Travel Tourism Council (WTTC) estimated that 100 million jobs in the sector are at risk and 62 million jobs are already lost.” Therefore, the situation is now quite critical.
Moving onto the panel discussion, Najmul presented his first question to the panellists and asked, “What can be done to prevent this job loss and businesses shutting down and other economic losses.”
Mariyam firstly shared how badly the pandemic affected the Maldivian tourism industry. As for countermeasure, she said, “Our Government responded promptly to mitigate the effects of pandemic with several health and economic meshes.”
“To support household and firms it provided temporary discounts on bills, lowered retail fuel prices, declared a moratorium on repayments for selected businesses and loans, lowered house and resort lease payments and provided financial aid to small and medium enterprise businesses,” Mariyam added.
“The situation in Bangladesh is not like in Maldives. Unfortunately tourism is not at all the priority sector from the government.” Taufiq said adding that the private sectors of Bangladesh are trying to convince the government that tourism can be greatly beneficial to the economy of the country.
Najmul had a specific question for Mariyam. “In terms of the whole environment, where do you see Maldives tourism a year from now?”
Mariyam replied with positive affirmation that Maldives tourism will be in a very good place in the future. Nevertheless, she was a bit concerned about the next wave of pandemic hitting the country. “We have estimated that about 1.7 million tourists would be arriving in Maldives. The way our government is handling all the strategies in this industry, we are optimistic that things will improve.”
Focusing on the topic domestic tourism, Najmul asked Taufiq, “What is the status of Public-Private Partnership on promoting domestic tourism during this pandemic?”
“In Bangladesh the domestic tourist market in these four or five years has increased a lot. Almost 97.4 per cent of income is coming from the domestic market. The tourist spots are getting overcrowded so the domestic market is booming.”
“Because of the Covid-19 situation the Government has closed down a lot of spots. Also because of the new Indian variant Covid-19 virus, it’s going to be very hard to restart tourism in Bangladesh,” Taufiq added.
Coming to the topic of global recovery of tourism, Najmul asked for Frank’s opinion on what initiatives need working on between Germany and South Asian Governments so that international tourism keeps on going.
Frank said all nations must work side by side to fight this pandemic for global recovery of tourism. He also emphasised the need of vaccination to people faster.
“Since 31 January 2021 we have distributed more than 113 million doses of vaccine to 43 countries. This way the South Asian nations will benefit from our vaccines. And since all the vaccines come from India, so that way it’ll be more certain that every South Asian country gets access to the vaccine,” Frank added.