From airlines and restaurants to casinos and tourist attractions, 2020’s economic shutdown sucked $1.1 trillion in travel-related spending out of the U.S. economy, a 42-percent year-on-year loss, according to a report commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association (USTA).
That loss of spending idled 5.6 million workers, about a third of the country’s travel-related workforce, the study found.
It also cost governments at all levels a collective $64 billion in tax revenues, the office of Congress member Catherine Cortez Masto has noted.
Before the pandemic, travel accounted for 11 percent of all U.S. employment, the USTA said. The industry’s job loss accounts for 39 to 65 percent of all jobs lost to the economic shutdown, according to various estimates.
“It’s still unclear when travel demand will be able to fully rebound on its own,” USTA president Roger Dow said in a statement announcing the study.
“With the travel industry suffering such a disproportionate share of losses, policymakers need to understand that a nationwide economic recovery… hinges on a travel recovery,” he added.
TREND FORECAST: While there will be a bounce-back in tourism, those businesses that have been put out of business will not return. What has been lost is lost. And, with uncertainty as to who can travel or not depending on COVID tests and vaccine passports, there will be an overall decline in the tourism sectors.
