ВПЛИВ МІЖНАРОДНОГО ТУРИЗМУ НА ЕКОНОМІЧНУ ПОЛІТИКУ КРАЇНИ В УМОВАХ ПАНДЕМІЇ COVID-19

Abstract

In the developed countries, tourism is an important source of income and wellbeing improvement. In Ukraine, with all its incredibly rich historic heritage and priceless recreation and spa resorts resources, tourism is developing mostly as an outbound one. Under hard modern political-economic situation of Ukraine, with all its financial problems, issues of the situation on the international tourism market and its future changes under COVID-19 epidemics, the place of tourism in the national economic policy are critically urgent and are partially examined in the article. The objective of the research is to reveal the issues of nature, importance, modern state and prospects of international tourism development in the economic policy of Ukraine under COVID-19 epidemics. Currently, tourism industry is a one of the forms of international service trade, which is rapidly developing. In the past 20 years, the average growth rate of newly arriving foreign tourists in the world constituted 5,1%, while currency incomes accounted for about 14%. In 2019, by the UNWTO data, international tourist arrivals reached 1,5 billion which is the tenth year of positive dynamics in a row for the global tourism. The expert’s forecasts for 2020 about the rates and dynamics of international tourism development were rather optimistic and expected its rapid growth for the next years. However, COVID-19 epidemics modified the existing forecasts and plans and radically changed forever the industry’s development. By the latest UNWTO data, global tourism has live through the worst year ever in 2020, the number of international tourists declined by 74%. Tourist destinations in the whole world earned 1 billion less in 2020 that a year before because of the unprecedented drop of demand and restriction imposed on travels. By the experts assessment, export incomes of the international tourism amount to about 1,3 trillion dollars. The international tourism crisis caused by COVID-19 epidemics put at risk 100-120 million jobs in tourism and supporting industries, most of which are small and medium sized businesses. It is even harder to evaluate money lost by state budgets in the forms of uncollected taxes and other payments. The COVID-19 epidemics impact on the international tourism in Ukraine is not as dramatic as in some tourism-focused countries because Ukrainian economy is in a comparatively better state, since the share of domestic and outbound tourism is much higher that the inbound one. Governments of the most countries immediately responded to the acute need of minimizing the economic consequences of COVID-19 epidemics. Among the suggested scenarios of preventing the negative impact of the epidemics on the economic situation, countries used following two approaches: first – aimed at providing affordable credit lines for businesses, the second one has to work out after postponing payments of debt and tax obligations.