Tourism Post COVID-19: What’s New in Indonesian Tourism Demand Trends? (original) (raw)
MTCON’21 - Conference on Managing Tourism Across Continents, 2021
Tourism has been one of the sectors with the highest impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Travel bans, tourist health concerns, and uncertainty have exceptionally constrained tourism movements. Countries under an unstable economic situation that generate significant income from tourism were also affected at the macro level. According to TÜRSAB (2020), 51.7 million tourists came to Turkey in 2019. 34.5 billion dollars of tourism income was obtained. However, in the first three quarters of 2020, there was a 71.3% decrease in the number of tourists (11.9 million visitors) and a 69.4% decrease in tourism revenues compared to the same period of the previous year. Domestic travel and travel expenditures also decreased by more than 55% compared to the previous year. The occupancy rates decreased from 83.2% in the first nine months of last year to 35.4%; nevertheless, some hotels were closed due to the pandemic. It is possible to say that these situations affect the tourism sector and over 1 million people working in the sector. As the first effect, there was a 15% loss of employment in the sector. The government has provided 36-month loans with a 12-month grace period with a low-interest rate under the Credit Guarantee Fund's guarantee for Turkey's tourism sector to overcome the problem. For the consumers, 36-month loans with a 6month grace period and 15-month credit card solutions with a 3-month grace period were offered to be used in tourism expenditures, but these were not sufficient either. In the tourism sector, previous epidemics' effects have been more local to tourism, but the COVID 19 pandemic has a global and significant impact (Skare et al., 2021). In times of crisis, tourism is fragile, and consumer perception is crucial (Novelli et al., 2018). Considering their existential concerns, people abandoned their travels to avoid the risk of becoming infected (Kock et al., 2020). In addition to the tourism sector, the crisis has enormous social and economic impacts on the people living in tourism regions (Qiu et al., 2020). New road maps need to be drawn in the aftermath of the pandemic affecting the tourism industry in a way that has never been seen before. The current situation is characterized by uncertainty, and the future of tourism will change according to the pandemic's way (Liu et al., 2020). For this reason, the study aims to evaluate the pandemic, which significantly impacts the tourism sector, especially within small businesses and consumers. First, observations and unstructured interviews were made in a tourism region. In the light of the findings obtained in the first stage, a second stage study was designed. At this stage, semi-structured interviews were held with consumers regarding their tourism activities in 2020 and their planned holiday choices in 2021. In these interviews, information about the future of tourism and consumer preferences was tried to be obtained. The findings obtained in the first two stages allowed us to make some predictions about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the future of tourism. The research is formed to be enriched with observations and interviews to be held in the exact location in 2021 in a similar period. Besides, it is planned to conclude the research by conducting a study with broad participation with the consumers after re-interviews and observations. The findings obtained so far are discussed below in general terms. Research steps are given in Figure 1.