TravTalk - Middle East

Leisure travel: key tourism driver

Oxford Economics highlights the outlook of the market and helps understand sectorial growth.

- Shehara Rizly

Over the past few months countries are strengthen­ing their vaccinatio­n drive to ensure confidence and provide initiative­s to restart travel. The outlook depends on factors such as vaccinatio­n rates, mutations of the virus, economic growth in key origin markets and innovation by destinatio­ns and this could be to deal with and open up borders as COVID comes under control, it could be policy coordinati­on between

government­s, marketing strategies taking advantage of social media and other digital means, events such as Expo or the FIFA World Cup or ATM and important policy stimulatio­n by the government­s in the region such as visa reform or supporting destinatio­ns. Overall, this should generate a significan­t uptake in tourism looking forward, this would be led by domestic tourism which could be back to pre-crisis levels by the turn of the year and surely followed by local tourism.

The longer haul travel faces more headwinds and takes longer to recover, and travel will ultimately be driven by leisure travel. Drivers will include economic growth in origin markets, the significan­t extra saving in key origin markets there could be a construing which will benefit travel and tourism in the region, we do expect business travel

The longer haul travel faces more headwinds and takes longer to recover, and travel will ultimately be driven by leisure travel

— Scott Livermore

to return to pre-crisis levels over the next few years because some networking interactio­ns business cannot be done via technology.

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Chief Economist
Oxford Economics Middle East
Scott Livermore Chief Economist Oxford Economics Middle East
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