The pandemic has affected impacted the industry badly
Festus Owusu-Bartels, the Chief Executive Officer of SilverWhite Travel and Tourism, based in Accra has lamented that as the world continue to fight the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Travel and Tourism industry still remains the worst hit so far as business operations are concerned.
SilverWhite Travel and Tourism is a full Travel Trade enterprise that seeks to provide all cherished customers with more than a happy experience. It was registered in 2019.
According to him, since the pandemic is still hovering around, it poses a grave threat to businesses and economic activities particularly, those in the travel and tour industry.
“Our business as it stands has suffered major challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of Travel Restrictions imposed by various governments. Till date, there are still some borders closed since the pandemic emerged,” he said.
He added, “People are no more spending money to travel because cross-border events, international conferences among others have all been moved to online engagements.”
Mr. Festus Owusu-Bartels also mentioned that many travelers for the fear of contracting the COVID- have put all their travel activities on hold.
“People tend to enjoy conferences online than physical meetings nowadays and if care is not taken it might become the order of the day,” he decried.
He also revealed that according to the latest issue of the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, International tourist arrivals (overnight visitors) fell by 72% in January-October 2020 over the same period last year, curbed by slow virus containment, low traveller confidence and important restrictions on travel still in place, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The decline in the first ten months of the year represents 900 million fewer international tourist arrivals compared to the same period in 2019, and translates into a loss of US$ 935 billion in export revenues from international tourism, more than 10 times the loss in 2009 under the impact of the global economic crisis.
“There have been some financial cushion from organizations including the Mastercard Foundation and some of us have applied for support to boost our business but the COVID is our bigger problem,” he said.
“Another issue is that though government claimed to have put in place measures to alleviate our plight in the industry, we are yet to have a response from them eversince we applied for support,” Mr. Bartels bemoaned.