MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Tourism industry expected to contract up to 2% this year

International tourist arrivals in 2008 increased 2% over the previous year but with the advance of the global crisis the rate of growth in the second half came to a stand still and turned negative, a tendency which is expected to continue in 2009, --possibly between 0 and minus 2%--, according to the latest report form the World Tourism Organizations.

Overall, the 5% growth between January and June gave way to a 1% decline in the second half of the year. Though certainly not immune to the economic woes, tourism has initially resisted the economic downturn better than other economic sectors, such as construction, real estate or car manufacturing. As the current troubled economic scenario is expected to continue well into 2009 and probably beyond, the United Nations WTO initial forecast for this year is for an even more modest performance. According to the January 2009 issue of the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, international tourism is expected to stagnate or even decline slightly during the year. But, there is still a high degree of uncertainty and much will depend on the evolving economic conditions. If the economy starts to show signs of an earlier recovery, international tourism might grow slightly in 2009 but, if the economy deteriorates further, then the current forecast might be revised downwards. For 2008 as a whole, all regions were positive except Europe, which suffered stagnation in arrivals. The best performances were registered in the Middle East (+11%), Africa (+5%) and the Americas (+4%) – 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. Growth was negative in the last six months of 2008 in both Europe (-3%) and Asia (-3%). The drop is even more significant in Asia given its double digit growth in 2007 and strong showing in the first part of 2008 (+6%). On the other hand, the Americas (+1%), Africa (+4%) and the Middle East (+5%) still posted positive results in the second half of the year, although with a significant slowdown compared with the period between January and June. Despite the general deceleration, in 2008 several destinations around the world showed very positive results in all world regions, - notably Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Uruguay, the Republic of Korea, Macao (China), Indonesia, India, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco and Turkey. UNWTO expects 2009 international tourism to be in the range of 0% to a 2% decline. Along with the Americas, Europe will be the most affected region in terms of overall tourism results as most of its source markets are already in, or entering into, recession. In Asia and the Pacific results are expected to be positive, although growth will continue to be much slower compared with the region's performance in recent years; the same applies to Africa and the Middle East.