MADRID: The World Tourism Organisation (WTO) on Tuesday, January 18, said that tourism arrivals around the world are not expected to return to their pre-pandemic levels until 2024 at the earliest. The United Nation agency said that the highly contagious Omicron variant of COVID-19 will disrupt the recovery in early 2022. Last year, the world had seen 4% growth over 2020.
The UN WTO in a press release said that the pace of recovery remains slow and uneven across the world. It said that it is so because of the varying degrees of mobility restrictions, vaccination rates, and traveller confidence. In 2021, in Europe and America, foreign visitor arrival surged by 19% and 17%, respectively over 2020. In the middle east, arrivals declined by 24% in 2021. In Asia-Pacific region, arrivals had declined by 65% in 2021 over 2020 and they were 94% below pre-pandemic levels.