Coronavirus pandemic
The day coronavirus pandemic has made its presence felt across the globe one thing that has received a drubbing is the world economy. Not only has global trade gone down but the economy will take months and possibly years together to come out of the shock.
The coronavirus impact is being felt the least in the tourism sector. In India the loses are reported to be huge as travel, tourism and aviation industries have come to a halt. The problem has become all the more worse with the government suspending visas for a month, a move that could cause an immediate economic impact of at least Rs 8,500 crore.
Industry bodies, including Indian Association of Tour Operators (IATO), and ASSOCHAM, foresee job losses in the sectors as companies try to tide over the situation by removing non-essential work forces and stopping recruitment.
The ban on travel to India for a period of one month will have a cascading economic impact and will lead to job losses in the entire hotel, aviation and travel sector. If no visas are valid, within next ten days the travel and tourism industry will come to a virtual stop. It would mean that everyone will cut down costs and terminate non-essential staff and stop recruiting additional staff.
Though the impact on tourism sector was recorded since November, when coronavirus made news. Hotel room cancellations began and crossed the 80 per cent mark. New bookings are almost completely on hold.
In an impact assessment of the coronavirus pandemic, CII Tourism Committee has made it public that to save on variable costs and minimise fixed costs many small and midsized hotels, resorts and car rental companies are shutting down operations and asking staff to go on leave without pay.
Moreover, working capital of many corporates in tourism sector is seriously hit by almost 60 per cent and for micro, small and medium tourism enterprises by almost 80 per cent.
The situation seems all the same, or even worse for the tourism sector in Jammu and Kashmir. The region has already witnessed an almost zero footfall during the previous year after the then state government announced a tourist advisory asking tourists to leave Kashmir and later revoking the Article 370 and bifurcating the state into two union territories.
Since tourism sector had pinned its hopes on this year with the government too making its plans on the investor summit scheduled to be held after May this year.
Besides, the government had also planned to open up Asia’s largest Tulip garden in Srinagar to attract tourists in hordes to this place.
But as of now the picture seems grim as tourist footfalls are likely to dry up in the coming weeks as the coronavirus is making an impact across India these days.
KV Network
