ABSTRACT
A “right to tourism” has been part of the UNWTO’s discourse on tourism long before the adoption of the Convention, including in its 1999 Global Code of Ethics for Tourism. However, this consecration in an instrument destined to be legally binding on states, and eventually enforceable, underlines the normative status the right to be a (leisure) tourist has attained. In March 2020, COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. Travel was highly restricted, either by government advisories and orders, or by common sense. Through thoughtful leadership by the UNWTO and all other tourism actors involved in the inevitable reboot of the sector, our collective self-isolation experience could result in increased awareness of the situation of people whose freedom of circulation is impaired. A “right to tourism” without a strict association with, namely, social tourism, renders it ethically senseless.
