Whether it’s Madrid, Tokyo, Doha or the Fiji Islands, no part of the world will be left undisturbed by tourist footfall in 2024. According to the United Nations Tourism Office, 285 million people traveled to international destinations between January and March alone, 20% more than in the first quarter of last year. Forecasts suggest that passenger numbers will increase by 2% compared to pre-pandemic figures, due to pent-up demand from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, improved air connectivity and the recovery of Asian countries. Last year, tourism contributed more than $3.2 billion to the global economy, equivalent to 3% of global gross domestic product. If things go as experts predict, this figure will be even higher in 2024.
There are many economic and political factors in favor of the industry. The most notorious is the growing demand, which seems not to be met, even though it has been three years since the coronavirus paralyzed the world and closed borders like never before. Experts call it the “champagne effect”, according to Juan Moraes, president of the Spanish Tourist Board. “So many people have not been able to travel or do any activity related to tourism for the last four years. Now that they have the opportunity, they want to take advantage of this moment and the spending rate reflects that,” he says. Everyone wants to travel, but if you were to point on a map where the majority of tourists come from, you would point to China, the United States, Germany, the UK and France. It is these countries that spent the most money on holidays in 2023, but emerging markets such as India and South Korea are also on the list. Analysts acknowledge that the recovery of Asian markets and the expansion of a middle class with purchasing power in developing countries are driving the new tourism boom.
According to consulting firm McKinsey, 40% of China’s population will belong to the middle class in 2030, which represents an increase of 200 million people compared to today’s figure. Similarly, India, the world’s most populous country with more than 1.4 billion inhabitants, is expected to add 250 million to its middle class over the next decade, according to the India Brand Equity Foundation. “These huge figures will have important implications for the global tourism industry because they represent new travelers starting to visit foreign countries,” said Trent Innes, chief growth officer at Siteminder.
The increase in potential travelers is inseparable from the market recovery. Last year, China made its long-awaited comeback after three years of lockdown, but the economic benefits were not as good as expected. Beijing authorities implemented a series of measures, and the country’s GDP is expected to grow at a healthy 5% in 2024. In April, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that the world economy will grow by 3.2% this year. This is the same rate of increase as the world GDP in 2023, and with the same rate of increase expected in 2025, it seems that the world has reached cruising speed.
Nothing is better for tourism than a strong economy. After a sluggish start to the year, the European Union saw a slight increase in household consumption of 0.2% in the first quarter. Analysts attribute Europe’s resilience to strong job creation and the huge savings accumulated during the pandemic, despite Germany’s engine failure and the IMF predicting a lower growth rate than the US. Apparently, Europeans have not yet exhausted these reserves, helped by public support and reduced spending during lockdown. It is therefore not surprising that consumer optimism has remained stable and is improving as we head into the summer, as a recent McKinsey survey noted.
Industry analysts say there are also psychological factors behind this relative buoyancy. They believe the pandemic has changed the way many people think, creating a new type of hedonism. “Various factors have led people to prefer short-term experiences over projects that may not be successful in the long term,” says Oscar Perrelli, director of research and surveys at the Exceltur tourism federation. No one knows if this preference will last forever, but the World Travel and Tourism Council has said that from 2022 onwards, “even when the going gets tough, people will prefer to save in other areas rather than cut their travel budgets.”
Government policies have also contributed to the boom – some of them disappointing. Professor José Serrano of Madrid’s European University explains this by pointing to the government’s strategy to make Japan a major tourist destination, which includes subsidies for the development of tourist sites and the promotion of rural tourism. The region currently welcomes millions of visitors every year, and the government has recently taken steps to slow the tide of tourists.
Among the government strategies implemented to revive the tourism industry, which dried up overnight a few years ago, were changes to visa regulations, which provided an additional boost. The most notable example was China, which late last year announced visa exemptions for citizens of five European countries and Malaysia. Following this relaxation of requirements, travel to China increased tenfold during the Lunar New Year period (February 10-17), according to a recent report from the United Nations Tourism Office.
“There is no region in the world that doesn’t want to increase its income, so they put more money into tourism,” says José Manuel Lastra, vice president of the Spanish Federation of Travel Agents. “Morocco and Peru have seen a big increase, as have Ireland and Austria,” he says. Pablo Diaz Luque, an educator at the University of Superior of Catalonia, adds that social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have made travel a necessity. “Sharing tourist experiences is now a necessity, and it’s becoming more and more urgent because it’s consumed immediately. Before, people shared photo albums, but it was a slower process,” he says.
All this could make 2024 a record-breaking year. The World Travel and Tourism Council predicts that tourist numbers and spending will exceed pre-pandemic figures in 142 of the 185 countries analyzed. As the council’s president, Julia Simpson, explains, economic growth and tourism are mutually compatible, so tourism-related jobs will increase by 10%. “Travel and tourism are not just about getting on a plane and going to new places. They are drivers of job creation, economies and cultural integration around the world,” she says. Aside from protests over overcrowding in some popular destinations, tourism in 2024 seems to have no limits.
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