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Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Tourist Industry: Coronavirus concerns, anxiety send US travel industry into a spiral - by Curtis Tate, Dawn Gilbertson and Morgan Hines

A government warning not to board a cruise ship or long flight if you're frail. Convention and event cancellations from coast to coast. Global travel warnings.

The travel and tourism industry has taken hit after hit since the coronavirus outbreak began in January. It's still early for concrete data, but economists and industry executives fear 9/11- or recession-like repercussions. Travel demand plummeted, then and was slow to recover.

"Unfortunately, they're on the front lines on the effect of this virus. They're getting pummeled,'' said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Analytics.

He said the travel and tourism impact from coronavirus could be greater than the fallout from 9/11, or the 2003 SARS outbreak, because of the global nature of the crisis.

"Global travel is effectively shutting down,'' he said. "It's going to take a while to get it back up and running again. This is going to be a very tough year for the travel and tourism industry.''

The International Air Transport Association, which represents global airlines, last week boosted its estimates of the global financial hit from COVID-19 from $29.3 billion to between $63 billion and $113 billion as the bookings falloff has spread beyond Asia.

That would put airlines in their most precarious position since after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In the U.S. alone, the travel industry lost $40 billion from 2001 to 2005.

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