Quantifying the loss of China’s tourism revenue induced by COVID-19

ABSTRACT

A huge tourism loss has undoubtedly resulted from COVID-19, but few studies have attempted to quantify it. This paper presents a post-investigation of the loss of China’s tourism revenue caused by COVID-19 in 2020. The natural trend theory is employed to estimate tourist flow in China without COVID-19, and the loss of tourism revenue induced by COVID-19 is computed by multiplying the decrease in tourist arrivals by the average expenditure. The results show that in 2020, the total loss of China’s tourism revenue induced by COVID-19 is in the range of US $618,995,929,706 to US $665,682,125,283.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• loss assessment
• tourism revenue
• natural trend theory
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Because the average expenditure of tourists has remained steady in recent years, the loss can be calculated using the value in 2019.

2 The figure comes from China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by Science Foundation of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (ZSTU) under grant number 22092030-Y.