‘A lost season’: Hard road ahead as the tourism industry struggles to bounce back from coronavirus crisis

Restaurants and hotels are slowly starting to reopen – but fear a second wave could devastate business, Borzou Daragahi finds

The sector has been forced into survival mode (AFP/Getty)

For the global tourism and entertainment industry, surviving the coronavirus is like the plot of a horror or zombie film: you win if you make it to the closing credits alive.

When Umut Ozkanca, CEO of the Turkish-based global restaurant and entertainment group d.ream, received government orders to shut down branches in Hong Kong and Bangkok earlier this year, he went into action. Frozen foods were put deep into the freezers. Produce with a shorter shelf life was handed out to staff as they headed home for lockdown. “We closed down 80 restaurants within two hours,” he says.

As the firm’s restaurants began to slowly reopen, the company quickly came up with manuals for staff, organised training courses for employees and designated coronavirus ambassadors to serve as health czars for each restaurant – men and women who know what to do when a sick customer walks in, or when a staff member tests positive for coronavirus. The firm began scrutinising suppliers, tracing each tomato as it made its way from farm to truck to distributor to the cutting board of a restaurant’s kitchen.

“It’s about survival,” says Ozkanca. “In order to survive you have to be agile and act fast.”

Around the world restaurants and hotels are haltingly opening back with restricted capacities and special safety measures. Flights have resumed across Eurasia with airlines sometimes keeping middle seats unoccupied and requiring passengers and flight staff to wear masks.

The risks are high. The frenetic flow of tourism around the world contributed to the rapid spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which made its way through airports and convention centres into houses of worship, eateries and nursing homes. As the summer holiday season begins, the pandemic has killed more than half a million people worldwide and continues to spread, with infection rates accelerating in some parts of the globe.

Shutting down borders, travel and entertainment facilities was one of the first and most dramatic steps taken by governments worldwide to keep the pandemic in check, delivering a massive blow to an industry estimated to directly contribute just under $3 trillion (£2.4 trillion) to the global economy. The result has been dramatic. According to a June report by the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation, the worldwide tourism industry is expected to suffer a decline of between 60 and 80 per cent this year.

“The reality is that global tourism will be hard hit throughout 2020 and beyond, even if the spread of the virus is brought under control in the coming months,” the report says.

There have been other disruptions to tourism in the past, such as following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the United States, the Icelandic volcano of 2010, periodic coups and wars and other natural and manmade disasters. But nothing like this.

“This is a global crisis, affecting all markets,” Turkey’s tourism minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy says in an interview with The Independent.

In previous crises, he says, “we saw lower numbers from some markets, but we never closed the doors. This time we closed the doors.”

During the darkest days of the pandemic, tourism businesses struggled to stay afloat. Some restaurants tried to switch to delivery services. Some hotels tried to woo long-term guests. They applied for tax relief and government handouts – including credit facilities and grace periods on wages offered as part of loan packages by the central banks.

The first target for the sector is restarting again, and we don’t care what that looks like

Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey’s tourism minister

Adding to the stress has been the unprecedented nature of the pandemic. Industry leaders voice frustration about lacking clarity on dates that would help them schedule staffing and the shipment of supplies, or statistical data that would help them predict consumer behaviour.

Getting the industry back on its feet is important for economies dependent on tourism, which is among the most labour-intensive sectors in commerce and a key way for unskilled and poorer people to make it into the middle class.

From waiting staff to middle managers, many in the business have been thrown out of their jobs. In Turkey, restaurant and hotel staff working in big cities have moved back to the provinces, robbing extended families of remittances and adding to the burdens of the rural poor.

In Israel, hundreds of people thrown out of work in the tourism and travel industry blocked a Jerusalem highway to protest a lack of economic relief and continued restrictions on air travel. “Open the skies!” they chanted. “Don’t let tourism die,” reads a sign held up by one protester.

Bars and restaurants across Europe have been open for weeks, with social distancing and hygiene measures in place. Tourism in Turkey collapsed by more than 95 per cent during the darkest months of the pandemic. But it is already starting to pick back up as domestic travel resumes.

“The first target for the sector is restarting again, and we don’t care what that looks like,” Mr Ersoy told The Independent, adding: “it’s a lost season this year.”

Mr Ersoy, a travel industry magnate himself, says that since lockdown measures were eased in early June, revenues have been steadily increasing. But they remain far off from the banner year Turkey experienced in 2019, when tourism generated $34.5 bn (£27.6 bn) in the country of 84 million.

He acknowledged that many hotels and restaurants have given up, shuttering in hopes of reopening next year, but possibly remaining closed forever.

“Of course, not all hotels will open this year, but more than 50 per cent will open,” he says.

Key to restarting the industry is getting customers to emerge from their coronavirus cocoons and venture out to airports, hotels, and restaurants. Conventions and conferences, a backbone of the industry, remain off the table, for now.

Mr Ozkanca, whose firm operates restaurants in Hong Kong, Dubai and the United Kingdom as well as Turkey, described several categories of Covid-era consumers: “rebels,” eager to get out and about and willing to take risk; “curious ones,” who will come out after they see whether the rebels get sick; and “disciplined ones,” who will watch how the curious customers fare before deciding to venture out.

Then, he says, there are those so spooked by the pandemic they “will only get out if [scientists] find a cure”.

To give the domestic tourism industry a boost, Turkey is offering low-interest “holiday loans” up to the equivalent of £1,166 paid directly from banks to hotels and resorts.

But many industry purveyors know that drumming up domestic tourism is not enough. Encouraged by tourism and travel industry lobbyists, overseas flights began in earnest this month, with the European Union this week offering a list of countries outside of its borders that had handled the pandemic well enough to be allowed to enter.

The left hand does not know what the right one is doing, and the entrepreneurs do not know what is in store for them

Gerald Loacker, Austrian member of parliament

On the list are countries that have lowered coronavirus infection rates such as Tunisia, China and Rwanda. Left off the list are the United States, Russia, and Brazil, which are still struggling with the pandemic.

There are some promising signs. Tunisia’s main international airport received dozens of flights and several thousand international travellers in the first three days after it resumed commercial flights on 27 June. But the average number of daily flights remains small — just 13 compared to 150 before the pandemic.

Egypt, whose Red Sea resorts are a major source of hard currency to prop up a fragile economy, opened up domestic tourism on 15 May and reopened the country to international travel on 30 June, even as its coronavirus infection numbers increased.

Confusion persists. Austria’s tourism industry, for example, doesn’t know whether to allow tourists coming from areas at greater risk such as the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen, which suffered a recent Covid-19 outbreak at a meat factory. “We are experiencing total chaos,” Gerald Loacker, an Austrian member of parliament, was quoted as saying in local media.

“The left hand does not know what the right one is doing, and the entrepreneurs do not know what is in store for them,” he says. “If you are managing a hotel and you have a corona case in your workforce, you do not know whether they are going to close your entire business on you or whether just the one employee is going into quarantine.”

Tourism industry boosters around the world are competing against each other to draw travellers at a time when finances worldwide are tight. No one is resting on their laurels; even France, which draws more tourists than any other country in the world, is promising that travel industry bigwigs and government officials have put their heads together to come up with health protocols which will “guarantee” the safety of employees and visitors.

“Beaches, countryside and mountain areas where people go walking or practise outdoor sports, culture and heritage sites, restaurants and tourist accommodation are all ready to welcome tourists again,” Caroline Leboucher, CEO of Atout France, the French tourism development agency, said in an announcement.

Still, many travellers may be wary of established tourism draws such as France, Spain and Italy because of the prevalence of the pandemic in those countries.

Greece, which imposed an early lockdown that halted the spread of the pandemic, is hoping its relatively low coronavirus infection rates will draw tourists. Only around 100 international flights arrived in the country on 1 July, as the tourism season kicked off, down from an anticipated 150 flights.

Malta, a frequent destination for British travellers, has all but eradicated the coronavirus, and opened to tourism this week, scrapping any proposed restrictions on travellers from continental Europe.

Turkey, which performed better than some of its neighbours but worse than others, is touting its medical system – which managed to handle the Covid pandemic even at its peak – to reassure travellers that even if they get sick whilst on holidays, they will receive adequate treatment.

Jordan, too, has ramped up medical tourism promotion, marketing itself as a destination for lower-cost surgeries and treatments.

A number of countries have launched certification programmes to give travel industry facilities and vehicles seals of approval. Turkey’s plan will include a system to train workers and conduct spot checks meant to reassure visitors and encourage businesses to take the health of their employees seriously. The tourism ministry has begun to list the names of companies that receive the approval on its website.

Industry sources say they are encouraged by the initial pace of the resumption of travel. Demand is down, with unemployment up and people with less cash in their pockets, but supply is also down, with many businesses opting to stay closed. Still, many worry about the impact of another shock should the pandemic make a comeback in the autumn.

“It’s going to be survival of the fittest, but the way it’s going I’m hopeful,” says Mr Ozkanca. “If it continues to like this, the recovery of business will be quick. But if we are hit by a second wave, I cannot even picture that. Well, at least I will know what to do this time.”