TTC Special: 2022, a good reputation year in tourism advances

By Frank Martin

Despite the economic and health crisis left behind by the global pandemic, the year 2022 has been recognized by world tourism entities as having a very good reputation in terms of recovery of this important travel industry.

The World Travel and Tourism Council, WTTC for its acronym in English and based in London, has been one of the large world tourism organizations that have praised the work in this regard last year.

WTTC, which is a forum made up of members of the global business community and works with governments to raise awareness about the travel and tourism industry, estimated that the past year was a great foundation for what happens with the sector not only in 2023 but in the years to come.

“The travel and tourism sector continues to recover at pace, demonstrating the industry’s resilience and enduring desire to travel,” Julia Simpson, WTTC President and CEO, said in a recent statement.

She added that by the end of 2023, the sector’s contribution will be within striking distance of the 2019 peak and 2024 will surpass those successes four years ago.

The origin is in the 2022 effort, added specialists consulted by TTC. An important link in the restoration of planetary tourism is that it grew by 2 percent in 2022 to reach $7.7 billion.

And all this despite the economic state considered extreme by many, not only because of the pandemic, but also because of the emergence of a very long European military conflict.

Specialized analyzes indicate that the harsh Covid-19 devastated employment in the sector, which registered losses of more than 70 million to bring the total number of employees in 2020 to just 264 million.

The Caribbean was not left behind in the brilliant past year.

The effort made by the local industries in the Caribbean Sea is still praiseworthy today, because of the foundation they formed for the restoration.

Also the WTTC made observations about that part of the world. The entity predicted in the middle of last year that regional travel would grow by 6.7% from 2022 to 2032. So far the prediction has been accurate.

Experts express that the prediction of a growth of 6.7 percent between 2022 and 2032 is going well and will probably generate more than a million new jobs in the branch.

Other global statistics indicate that in 2022 foreign visitor spending grew by a record 82 percent to reach $1.1 trillion.

Projections indicate that things are not going badly for the global tourism industry in 2023 despite world tribulations that sometimes seem endless.