The impact of COVID-19 on tourism sector in India

ABSTRACT

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which is one of its kind of humanitarian disasters, has affected people and businesses worldwide, triggering a global economic crisis. In this aspect, the tourism sector is not being left behind. The pandemic has not only affected the foreign exchange earnings (FEE) but also affected various regional developments, job opportunities, thereby disrupting the local communities as a whole. As there has been a substantial decline in the arrivals of overseas tourists in India in 2020, the paper aims to predict foreign tourists’ arrival in India and FEE using artificial neural networks (ANN). Furthermore, we analyse the impact of COVID-19 based on four scenarios considering with and without lockdown in terms of loss and gain in FEE. Lastly, the results obtained will help policymakers make necessary strategic and operational decisions, along with maximizing the FEE.

KEYWORDS:

• ANN model
• COVID-19
• forecasting
• foreign exchange earnings
• tourism demand

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanjita Jaipuria

Sanjita Jaipuria is presently working as Assistant Professor in the area of Operations and Quantitative Techniques in Indian Institute of Management, Shillong, India. Her teaching and research areas include forecasting, modelling and simulation, quality management and operations management. She published her research work in various international journals and presented in conferences.

Ratri Parida

Ratri Parida is a Visiting Research Fellow, Guildhall School of Business and Law, London Metropolitan University, London, UK. She completed her PhD from the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur. Her research interest focuses specifically on supply chain sustainability, freight transportation and healthcare supply chain. She has many publications in reputed international journals and international conferences in India and abroad.

Pritee Ray

Pritee Ray is an Assistant Professor in the area of operations management at the Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi. She obtained her PhD degree from IIT Kharagpur. Her research work appeared in European Journal of Operational Research, Annals of Operations Research, and International Journal of Business Economics etc. She acts as ad-hoc reviewer in many international journals and conferences. Her research and teaching interests include supply chain disruption risk, supply contract, operations research, and operations management.