Just as the COVID-19 epidemic is watering down, the European destinations will suffer additional losses in tourism and travel. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has disturbed tourists and travelers, notably native Americans who were intending to trip to the 27-nation-bloc this summer season.
According to James Ferrera, the head of InteleTravel, an online travel organization with over 70,000 travel consultants, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is impacting native Americans who had planned to go to Eastern Europe and elsewhere in the zone, SchengenVisaInfo.com says.
Ferrera discloses that the fall of ticket sales and cancellations, delay, and lesser reservations for Croatia, Czechia, Poland, and other vacation spots, have demonstrated the critical situation in reservations, as he also points out how these tourist attractions spots “have disappeared entirely from booking data and even search data.”
Furthermore, Ferrera highlighted that the conflict is harming all foreign travel, namely Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Western Europe. In addition, he claimed that it had threatened places for summer vacations such as Switzerland, the UK, Germany, and France, which are not near to the conflict zone, but the psychological influence might be visible.
“Cancellations of previously-booked travels by native Americans to Europe have already begun, but many cancellations are based on psychological panic,” Mahmood Kahn, director of the hotel and tourist management department at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business, stated for Forbes.
He also mentioned that the conflict began as many people were scheduling summer holidays, which would harm the tourism sector since holidaymakers might remain away from Europe.
According to the MMGY Travel Intelligence survey, 62 percent of native Americans have mentioned that the conflict in Ukraine is spreading to neighboring nations as a risk for them to carry out their holiday plans to Europe. As to COVID-19, just 31 percent identified that element as a worry, while 47 percent indicated that they want to wait to see how the situation in Ukraine evolves before they set their vacation plans for the year.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) warned this would happen beforehand since it predicted that the conflict would harm European nations, particularly the nearby nations.
“In general, we are heading in the right path, but there are some issues. Asia-Pacific is the laggard of the recovery. While Australia and New Zealand have declared plans to link with the world, China is exhibiting no indications of abandoning its zero-COVID policy. The associated targeted lock-downs in its own market are reducing global passenger numbers even as other key markets like the US are essentially back to normal,” IATA’s Director-General, Willie Walsh, stated.
The conflict might harm Russia the most, observing its enormous domestic market deteriorate due to sanctions imposed.