Using COVID-19 vaccination as a resilience strategy for the tourism sector – evidence from Serbia

ABSTRACT

This short communication discusses the inflow of foreign tourists during the current pandemic and its interplay with the wide-scale administration of COVID-19 vaccines in Serbia. It focuses on the country’s provision of free-of-charge vaccines to inbound tourists (primarily from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Albania, and Croatia). As a result, the tourism sector experienced a boost in tourist arrivals and overnight stays across the country, which contradicts the trend in the tourism industry and is, potentially, an effective resilience strategy. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how long the given effect will last and what the major benefits for stakeholders will be.

KEYWORDS:

• Serbia
• COVID-19
• vaccination
• overnight stays
• inbound tourists
• resilience strategies

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 This was reported by Al Jazeera, New York Times, CNN, AP, and others.

2 This term was used by the local media.

3 One example is that thousands of Indian nationals travelled to Serbia to spend two weeks of mandatory quarantine before proceeding to their final destinations in Western countries.