Exploring the impact of COVID-19 on tourism: transformational potential and implications for a sustainable recovery of the travel and leisure industry

Abstract

The study stipulates phases to observe the proposed mechanism in formulating the travel and leisure industry's recovery strategies. The present pandemic COVID-19 has resulted in global challenges, economic and healthcare crises, and posed spillover impacts on the global industries, including tourism and travel that the major contributor to the service industry worldwide. The tourism and leisure industry has faced the COVID-19 tourism impacts hardest-hit and lies among the most damaged global industries. The leisure and internal tourism indicated a steep decline amounting to 2.86 trillion US dollars, which quantified more than 50% revenue losses. In the first step, the study explores the consequences and settings of the COVID-19 pandemic and how innovation and change can contribute to the tourism industry's revival to the next normal. Thus, the study determines that tourism enterprises and scholars must consider and change the basic principles, main assumptions, and organizational situations related to research and practice framework through rebuilding and establishing the tourism sector. In the second step, the study discusses direct COVID-19 tourism impacts, attitudes, and practices in gaining the leisure industry's boom and recovery. In the third phase, the study proposes to observe the characteristics and COVID-19 tourism consequences on the travel and tourism research. The findings provide insights in regaining the tourism industry's operational activities and offer helpful suggestions to government officials, scholars, and tourism firms to reinvest in the tourism industry to set it back to a normal position.