The UNWTO sees global economy as main challenge for today’s tourism market

The overall 2% growth in international tourism for 2008 builds on the strong results of the first part of the year before the collapse of the financial markets. The second half of the year showed an abrupt shift in trend with international tourist arrivals flat or showing negative growth in each of the last six months of 2008.

Overall, the 5% growth between January and June gave way to a 1% decline in the second half of the year. Though certainly not immune to the economic woes, tourism has initially resisted the economic downturn better than other economic sectors, such as construction, real estate or car manufacturing.

As the current troubled economic scenario is expected to continue well into 2009 and probably beyond, UNWTO’s initial forecast for this year is for an even more modest performance.

According to the January 2009 issue of the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, international tourism is expected to stagnate or even decline slightly during the year. But, there is still a high degree of uncertainty and much will depend on the evolving economic conditions. If the economy starts to show signs of an earlier recovery, international tourism might grow slightly in 2009 but, if the economy deteriorates further, then the current forecast might be revised downwards.

Given the global uncertainty and with economic forecasts experiencing continued downward revisions, UNWTO will closely monitor developments to provide the most accurate analysis possible.

For the year as a whole, all regions were positive except Europe, which suffered a stagnation in arrivals. The best performances were registered in the Middle East (+11%), Africa (+5%) and the Americas (+4%) – in the case of the Americas, due to the strength of traffic to the USA up to August and the favourable performance of most Central and Southern American destinations.

Growth was negative in the last six months of 2008 in both Europe (-3%) and Asia (-3%). The drop is even more significant in Asia given its double digit growth in 2007 and strong showing in the first part of 2008 (+6%). On the other hand, the Americas (+1%), Africa (+4%) and the Middle East (+5%) still posted positive results in the second half of the year, although with a significant slowdown compared with the period between January and June.

Despite the general deceleration, in 2008 several destinations around the world showed very positive results in all world regions, – notably Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Uruguay, the Republic of Korea, Macao (China), Indonesia, India, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco and Turkey.

These results reflect international tourist arrivals only, for which comprehensive data is currently available. For domestic tourism, which is highly important for many destinations, UNWTO expects that it will show a more or less similar slowing trend. Results for international tourism receipts will be presented in a later stage. However, the experience of past years suggests that the growth of receipts tends to follow fairly closely that of arrivals.

The slowdown in advanced economies, which are facing a contraction in gross domestic product for the first time since World War II, is already spreading to major emerging markets such as China, India, and Brazil.

UNWTO expects 2009 international tourism to be in the range of 0% to a 2% decline. Along with the Americas, Europe will be the most affected region in terms of overall tourism results as most of its source markets are already in, or entering into, recession. In Asia and the Pacific results are expected to be positive, although growth will continue to be much slower compared with the region’s performance in recent years; the same applies to Africa and the Middle East.

UNWTO is increasing its response efforts to provide the sector, and its Members in particular, with the necessary support to help them endure these challenging times.