Tourism workers must get early COVID-19 vaccine for economic recovery – Bartlett
Published:Sunday | December 20, 2020 | 12:21 AMJanet Silvera - Senior Sunday Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett is making the case for Jamaica’s tourism workers to be early in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccination.
Arguing that the quick inoculation of the front-line workers in Jamaica’s number one service sector will translate to a shot in the arm to aid the industry and Jamaica’s quick and full recovery, Bartlett stated that it was quite evident that the prolonged downturn and slow recovery of the tourism sector will mean indefinite hardship and economic stagnation for many economies globally, and potentially billions of people.
“This provides a compelling basis to consider the sector for early vaccination against COVID-19,” Bartlett stressed in comments to The Sunday Gleaner.
He suggests that the call to consider the sector a priority for early vaccination against COVID-19 is based on the fact that international tourism has been recognised as being “too big to fail” as a result of its enormous socio-economic impact in global economies, small and large. It is against this background that the tourism minister is underscoring the importance of the sector’s survival during and beyond the current crisis in order to serve as a catalyst for national and global economic recovery and growth.
“Travel and tourism will be the key sector in driving the recovery of the global economy post-COVID-19 by generating new jobs, government revenues, foreign exchange, supporting local economic development and forging vital linkages with other sectors that will produce a positive domino effect on suppliers across the entire supply chain,” noted Bartlett.
CRITICAL TO OVERALL RECOVERY
While contributing some 11 per cent directly to Jamaica’s gross domestic product (GDP), the actual overall contribution of the travel and hospitality sector to the GDP was in the region of nearly 35 per cent in 2019. Pre-pandemic projections were for the sector to overtake banking and finance as the single greatest contributor to GDP by 2025.
Direct employment of 120,000 and another 250,000 indirect jobs created by the industry in Jamaica in 2018 were also set to grow significantly.
Further cementing his case, Bartlett noted that a healthy, expansionary tourism industry is critical to overall recovery of the Jamaican and global economies.
“It is for this reason that workers in travel and tourism, perhaps second only to essential workers as well as persons in vulnerable age and health categories, should be considered a priority for the administering of the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine when it becomes publicly available,” said the minister.
“International tourist arrivals increased from 25.3 million to 1.50 billion in 2019. At the end of 2019, international tourism had recorded its 10th consecutive year of growth and had outpaced the growth of global GDP for the ninth consecutive year. The number of destinations earning US$1 billion or more from international tourism had also doubled since 1998,” Bartlett said, quoting 50-year tourism growth figures from United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).
He said that based on an analysis of 185 countries in 2019, it was found that international tourism generated 330 million jobs, which is equivalent to one in 10 jobs globally, or a quarter of all new jobs created in the previous five years. Tourism, he maintains, also accounted for 10.3 per cent of global GDP and 28.3 per cent of global services exports, based on World Travel and Tourism Council 2020 figures.
The minister stressed that for many years, tourism has been the lifeline of many small, undiversified island economies located in the Caribbean Sea, as well as the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. For some of these economies, tourism accounts for as much as 80 per cent of exports and up to 48 per cent of direct employment, he said.
Underscoring the macroeconomic significance of the tourism industry, Bartlett stressed that: “Currently, over 100 million jobs are at risk, many being micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises that employ a high share of women, who represent 54 per cent of the tourism workforce, according to the UNWTO.
“Tourism is also critical for accelerating community development as it engages local populations in its development, giving them the opportunity to prosper in their place of origin. The current downturn has undoubtedly left many communities globally facing unprecedented economic dislocation.”
A WIDER IMPACT
Bartlett, who chairs the UNWTO Regional Commission for the Americas, said it was not surprising that travel and tourism have been disproportionately impacted by the socio-economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
He highlighted that the global health crisis has placed at risk more than 121 million jobs in travel and tourism. GDP losses for travel and tourism, he informed, are projected at between $3.4 trillion and $5.5 trillion. Export revenues from tourism, too, the minister noted, could fall by $910 billion to $1.2 trillion in 2020, producing a wider impact that could reduce global GDP by 1.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent based on UNWTO 2020 figures.
“Globally, the pandemic will likely result in a contraction of the tourism sector by 20 per cent to 30 per cent in 2020. Tourism receipts worldwide are not projected to return to 2019 levels until 2023, as tourist arrivals have fallen globally by more than 65 per cent since the pandemic, compared with eight per cent during the global financial crisis (of 2008) and 17 per cent amid the SARS epidemic of 2003,” the tourism minister added, quoting 2020 data from the International Monetary Fund.