ABSTRACT
The widespread crisis surrounding the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is laying bare the fragility and unsustainable nature of the current global economic system, in which travel and tourism play a crucial role. Tourism is one of the economic sectors most hit by the lockdowns and travel restrictions that countries have imposed to keep their citizens ‘in’ and travelers from abroad ‘out’. Prognosticating the future is risky, especially in these still early days of not knowing how the pandemic will progress, and just as mysterious, how the Re-organization resilience phase will pan out. Transformation requires solutions and actions that are not only tolerable and viable, but have the capacity to puncture the policy maker and practitioner bubbles, and also entice the traveling public to embrace the pandemic’s lessons to shift their past values to better align with those of planet.
