Postpandemic international tourism restart: effect of border control and vaccination

Abstract

Purpose As the current Coronavirus 2019 pandemic eases, international tourism, which was greatly affected by the outbreak, is gradually recovering. The attraction of countries to overseas tourists is related to their overall performance in the pandemic. This research integrates the data of vaccination of different countries, border control policy and holidays to explore their differential impacts on the overseas tourists’ intention during the pandemic. This is crucial for destinations to built their tourism resilience. It will also help countries and industry organizations to promote their own destinations to foreign tourism enterprises. Design/methodology/approach This study proposes an analysis based on panel data for ten countries over 1,388 days. The coefficient of variation is used to measure monthly differences of Chinese tourists’ intention to visit overseas country destinations. Findings Results show that, for tourist intention of going abroad: border control of the destination country has a significant negative impact; daily new cases in the destination country have a significant negative impact; domestic daily new cases have a significant positive impact; holidays have significant negative impact; daily vaccination of the destination countries has significant positive impact; and domestic daily vaccination have negative significant impact. Research limitations/implications First, there is a large uncertainty in studying consumers’ willingness to travel abroad in this particular period because of unnecessary travel abroad caused by the control of the epidemic. Second, there are limitations in studying only Chinese tourists, and future research should be geared toward a broader range of research pairs. Practical implications First, from the government perspective, a humane response can earn the respect and trust of tourists. Second, for tourism industry, to encourage the public take vaccine would be beneficial for both the tourism destination and foreign tourism companies. The same effect can be achieved by helping tourists who are troubled by border control. Social implications First, this research provides suggestions for the government and the tourism industry to deal with such a crisis in the future. Second, this study found that vaccination has a direct impact on tourism. This provides a basis for improving people’s willingness to vaccinate. Thirdly, this study proves suggestion for the destinations to build tourism resilience. Originality/value This study analyzes the unique control measures and vaccination in different countries during the pandemic, then provides suggestions for the tourism industry to prepare for the upcoming postpandemic tourism recovery. This study is valuable for improving the economic resilience of tourism destinations. Additionally, it helps to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of different restrain policies around the world.