Travel and Tourism Sees its Lowest Peak

Earlier this year, friends and families were excited for the holidays they had booked for Easter and summer, but now with Covid-19, it seems the travel industry has been hit tremendously hard.

Globally, on average there are over 8000+ flights in the air at any given time, however those numbers have fallen by more than half.

These numbers are continuing to drop as the days pass by, and this is having adverse effects on the economies of different countries. On top of this, there are a lot of tourists stuck in other countries that are unable to get back home due to lockdown regulations, and there are a minimal number of available planes.

To help this issue, Qatar Airways have done the opposite of what most aircraft carriers are doing and have increased the number of homeward flights to European countries – they have been able to fly more than a 100,000 tourists home.

The aviation industry has now gone from catering travel and tourism to focusing more on humanitarian causes. Planes around the world are now using almost all their flights, including passenger planes as cargo to deliver face masks and medical equipment.

While the travel industry is overlooked on most the time, for a lot of countries – it is extremely important for their economies. One such country is India, who have an extremely popular tourist scene that pulled in approximately over $240 billion in 2017.

India is just one of many countries that has already seen so many changes. To further gain an understanding on the situation around India, I interviewed Karthik, an airport worker in Chennai, India who is currently unable to work due to the lack of tourists and flights coming into the airport. Here is how the conversation went with the interviewee.

During the initial stages of the outbreak, India saw very few cases. However, as the virus spread around the world, the number of cases started to rapidly rise.

Like many other countries, India went into lockdown very quickly with strict regulations, which has caused the immediate cancellation of most incoming travel into the country as well as outgoing travel.

Being one of the main international hubs, this has not only caused many holidays to be cancelled, but also for many tourists to be stuck in their hotels around India.

There are new laws under the “Janata Curfew” that allow police to use reasonable force to people who are found outside for an invalid reason – this is building panic amongst a lot of travellers stuck in the country.

Due to travel to/from and within India is prohibited, the environment has vastly improved. This has been shown by the reduction of polluted air that had been caused by vehicles and air traffic. The visibility of the country has improved and the ever-lost Skyline of some of the major cities are finally visible to the eye.

By Siva Raghuraman