2021 ના ​​ટોચના નવા પ્રવાસ વલણો

Paralysis of Asia Pacific continued while Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and much of Africa have proven most resilient

A review of worldwide travel in 2021, broken down by region, reveals the extent to which international travel was paralyzed. Overall, international air travel was just over a quarter (26%) of its pre-pandemic level. The Asia Pacific region reached just 8%; whereas Europe achieved 30%, Africa & the Middle East 36% and the Americas 40%.

A comparison of travel between the first and second halves of the year (H1 and H2) shows that global international travel more than doubled from 16% of pre-pandemic levels to 36%. However, the recovery was extremely uneven. In the Asia Pacific region, flight arrivals grew from 5% of their 2019 level in H1 to 10% in H2. In Europe, they grew from 14% to 45%; in the Middle East & Africa, they grew from 24% to 48% and in the Americas, from 30% to 52%.

Within the regions, some countries were much more resilient to the impact of COVID-19 on travel than others. The stand-out destinations which best maintained their visitor numbers were Central America, particularly El Salvador and Belize, and the Caribbean – all holiday hotspots for US tourists. Many of them managed to record visitation rates in excess of 60% of 2019 levels throughout the year. The same degree of travel resilience was true of around two dozen countries in Africa. However, their level of resilience is a little less noteworthy because many of them have economies which are much less dependent on tourism.

મધ્ય પૂર્વે પુનર્જીવિત કરવાનું શરૂ કર્યું

Travel to various Middle East destinations also exceeded the 60% benchmark in H2. Most notably, travel to Turkey climbed from 33% in H1 to 67% in H2 of pre-pandemic levels and travel to Egypt grew from 37% to 72%. Dubai held its position as the top city destination; and Doha overtook Dubai as an air transit hub.

Domestic travel has been dominant, particularly in large countries

While many countries have been able to impose severe restrictions on international travel, citing the need to keep their own populations safe, imposing equally stiff constraints on one’s own populations is politically more challenging. Consequently, there has been a relative rise in domestic travel, particularly in geographically large countries such as Brazil, China, Russia and the USA, where it is possible to fly for a few hours without crossing the border. In China domestic travel volumes returned to pre-pandemic levels as early as September 2020; however, they fell back in January and again in August, owing to a resurgence in cases of COVID-19. In Brazil, Russia, the US and China, domestic travel rose respectively to 148%, 128%, 87% and 76% of pre pandemic levels in the second half of 2021, compared to 50%, 28%, 39% and 1% for international travel.