The global travel & tourism sector is forecasted to generate 126 million additional jobs between 2022 and 2032, said the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) in a new report.
Many of these new jobs will be concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region (64.8 per cent) in general, and China (25.5 per cent) and India (20.4 per cent), according to WTTC’s report titled “Global Economic Impact Trends 2022”.
In 2022, as travelers’ confidence improves, the global travel & tourism sector is estimated to hasten its pace of recovery to 43.7 per cent compared to 2021 and add a further 10 million jobs. The sector is likely to return to pre-pandemic levels around the end of 2023 and the preliminary data for the first half of 2022 supports this forecast.
Meanwhile, the sector’s contribution to the global economy is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 5.8 per cent which is more than double the 2.7 per cent average annual growth rate estimated for the global economy.
The sector’s contribution to GDP in Europe was 47.1 per cent below the pre-pandemic level in 2020, and the gap reduced to 32.3 per cent below 2019’s level in 2021, showing a strong rebound. It is estimated that the sector’s performance in Europe could surpass 2019’s level in 2024 when travel & tourism contribution to the region’s GDP could reach 4.1 per cent above the pre-pandemic amount.
Asia-Pacific is forecasted to be the first region to revert to the 2019 scenario (in 2023), while all the other regions are estimated to recover completely in 2024.
