The tourism industry in Europe will be fortunate to see a full recovery by 2023, according to the chief executive of tourism association Etoa.
Speaking on a panel at the inaugural Global Travel Week trade event in London, Tom Jenkins highlighted problems inbound sectors would face as they reopened, including establishing consumer confidence and addressing staffing and skills issues.
He said: “From the UK perspective [the industry] is coming out of a near-total absence of tourism that has lasted more than 18 months.
“If you look back at the past great tourism slumps in 1986, 1991, 2002/3 and 2007/8, we have never experienced anything like this.
“Members [of Etoa] will say there is considerable pent-up demand but I don’t know how robust that is. The tourism industry relies almost on a conveyor belt of people going to a destination and telling people what a great time they had and it’s going to take a while to build that momentum.
“You normally expect things to climb out of a recession quite slowly and we’ve never seen a recession like this.”
Jenkins added: “There are also issues on the supply side as the service economy has been mothballed. We know there will be challenges with hotels and restaurants being fully staffed up.
“I don’t know what the dawn is going to look like. I think it is going to be gradual. It will occur, but I think my members would be very, very happy if we saw a full recovery by 2023.”
Susan Deer, director of industry relations at Abta, agreed the broader restart presented “framework challenges” in the shape of travel restrictions and advice but also operational challenges as overseas sectors that had largely been shut down began to return.
She said: “Companies such as long-haul specialists and school travel operators have obviously had different challenges to those businesses that have been able to operate, albeit at a reduced level.
“My team also deals with the operational side [overseas] in areas such as health and safety, and you’ve had a lot of hotels that have been full closed or partly-staffed. We’ve lost a lot of the expertise from the industry so we are looking at the issues that come up with hotels that aren’t necessarily Covid-related.
“We are looking at all those standards and obviously tour operators are going to have to engage with that.”