During the Covid-19 pandemic, most industries were forced to adapt to new ways of doing business, as employees began to work from home and customers were approached through online platforms. While some industries tackled this shift quite easily, some others, like hospitality and agriculture, could not make the transition. Service-driven tourism and hospitality is an industry that has next to no provision to be able to continue economic activity remotely. Neither employees nor customers can access these services remotely. One way that this is reflected is by a drop in the number of foreign tourists arriving in India which went from 12 lakh in December 2019 to 470 in April 2020. Even after India and other countries began slowly opening up their borders after the decline of the first wave, only 80,000 foreign tourists visited India in December 2020. While this reflects only one part of the rampage the pandemic has inflicted on the sector, which is heavily dependent on the movement of people across national and international borders, the other part, the domestic tourism sector, has a similar story to tell.
The pandemic has affected lakhs of families as the death count in the country has reached the third highest in the world at 3.29 lakh. The financial impact of the pandemic has affected many more as the economy recorded a negative growth of 7.3% in 2020-21 (provisional estimates of the Central Statistics Office) as the tourism, communications, and transport industries took the biggest hit recording a dip of 18.2% in 2020-21. The microeconomic impact of this decline has manifested in the form of falling demand, consequently, a decline in revenue, and finally, reduction in salaries and increased job cuts. Despite relief measures announced by the central and state governments, it is unclear whether the tourism sector across states – which is one of the biggest sources of employment for millions – will be able to fully recover from the impact of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.