Domestic tourism, its potential to compensate the outage of international arrivals caused by COVID-19 and the vulnerability of different groups of countries (a cluster analysis)

Abstract

Tourism is the most affected industry by the pandemic COVID-19 and will be probably also the last one to recover. International organizations UNWTO, WTTC, and others suppose that domestic tourism will play a significant role in 2020 and after. However, domestic tourism is not a universal solution for all destinations. This paper aims to identify the factors that might play a role in the domestic tourism results in 2020 and later and to which extent domestic tourism can compensate the outage of international arrivals in different countries. Two types of factors were analysed: (1) economic factors (GDP, GDP per capita, share of tourism on GDP) and (2) characteristics of tourism (domestic tourism intensity, Travel &Tourism Competitiveness Index, domestic tourism share etc). Based on the data from 2018 and 2019 from 41 countries, the cluster analysis identified six groups of countries with different potential of domestic tourism to support the survival of the tourism businesses and drive recovery in the post-pandemic period.