IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2021-224.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Diversion of Tourism Flows in the Asia & Pacific Region: Lessons for COVID-19 Recovery

Author

Listed:
  • Vybhavi Balasundharam
  • Mr. Robin Koepke

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a collapse in international tourism, severely impacting the tourism-dependent economies in the Asia & Pacific region. Once countries start reopening, tourism diversion effects could accelerate the recovery in countries that establish themselves as more attractive travel destinations than competitors. We investigate the impact of previous shocks in tourism competitor countries on visitor inflows, with a particular focus on tourism-dependent Pacific Island Countries (PICs). We find that PICs were generally resilient to external shocks and benefitted from diversion effects for certain types of shocks. For example, the share of departures from Australia to PICs increased by 12 percent during the SARS outbreak. We then derive policy implications for the post-COVID-19 revival of inbound tourism to PICs and lessons for the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Vybhavi Balasundharam & Mr. Robin Koepke, 2021. "Diversion of Tourism Flows in the Asia & Pacific Region: Lessons for COVID-19 Recovery," IMF Working Papers 2021/224, International Monetary Fund.
    • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/224
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=464342
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2021/224. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.