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Abstract
The pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19) has transformed the tourism sector to an unprecedented extent, creating new challenges and new development paths. Although the recovery of tourism is fraught with uncertainties, the changes in tourists’ travel habits offer a unique opportunity for tourism to recover in a way that respects the principles of sustainable development. Several international studies suggest that the pandemic has significantly transformed tourists’ travel habits and destination choices, making them more environmentally conscious and shifting their preferences towards inland destinations close to nature. To test these claims, we examined tourists’ destination choices and the factors influencing them in a sample of 500 respondents in Hungary before the pandemic and after the restrictions on travel, businesses, gatherings, and mask requirements were lifted in the summer of 2021. Our results show that there was no significant change in the destination choices of the tourists surveyed. The main influences were the aspects of safety and comfort; the consideration of environmental concerns, despite our assumptions, did not play a significant role.
Highlights
Martin Balázs Zsarnóczky and LórántThe world is experiencing an unprecedented global health, social and economic emergency due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19
According to 2019 statistics from the World Tourism Organization, the number of international tourists arriving in Europe was over 700 million per year, a figure that has fallen by 70% to over 500 million, despite a rebound in summer 2020
We sought to answer the research question: how did the impacts of the pandemic change the destination choices of the Hungarian tourists surveyed and did it influence their preferences in a positive way towards a more nature-based tourism? In our research, we formulated two hypotheses and used artificial neural networks to analyze the factors involved in destination choice
Summary
Martin Balázs Zsarnóczky and LórántThe world is experiencing an unprecedented global health, social and economic emergency due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19. Organization [2] (UNWTO, Madrid, Spain, 2021a), the number of international tourists fell by 74% to 1 billion in 2020 This compares to a 4% decline during the global economic crisis in 2009. According to 2019 statistics from the World Tourism Organization, the number of international tourists arriving in Europe was over 700 million per year, a figure that has fallen by 70% to over 500 million, despite a rebound in summer 2020. This has led the World Tourism Organization to describe 2020 as “the worst year in the history of tourism” [2] This has led the World Tourism Organization to describe 2020 as “the worst year in the history of tourism” [2] (p. 9)
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