New Delhi: The outbreak of the Covid-19 global pandemic severely impacted the travel and tourism industry in the country as these services were the worst hit during the lockdowns, resulting in the loss of more than 2.1 crores (21.5 million) jobs in the country during the April-December 2020 period, the government told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.
In response to a question by Ajay Pratap Singh in the Rajya Sabha, Tourism Minister G. Kishan Reddy said the job loss in the tourism sector was to the extent of more than 60% of the total employment in the travel and tourism sector in the previous year.
Citing the data from a study titled India and the Coronavirus Pandemic: Economic Losses for Households Engaged in Tourism and Policies for Recovery, the minister said a significant number of direct jobs were lost in the tourism sector once the lockdown was implemented.
Job loss due to nationwide lockdown
In order to slow down the community spread of the highly contagious SarS-CoV-2 virus in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced a three-month complete nationwide lockdown in March 2020.
After three months, the government gradually started opening up the economy as travel restrictions were restricted. However, people were not traveling due to the fear of contracting the Covid virus, and hotels and hospitality industries remained severely impacted.
According to the findings of the study, 14.5 million direct jobs were lost during the first quarter (April-June 2020 period), 5.2 million were lost during the second quarter, and 1.8 million direct jobs were lost during the third quarter (October-December period).
The cumulative job loss during the first nine months of FY 2020-21 (April-December 2020 period) has been pegged at 21.5 million direct jobs, which is more than 61% of the total direct jobs in the sector during the pre-pandemic period when around 34.8 million direct jobs were there in the sector.
Impact on tourism economy
The extent of the loss to the tourism sector can be gauged from the fact that due to the overall economic slowdown during FY 2020-21, the tourism economy or Tourism Direct Gross Value Added (TDGVA) saw a fall of 42.8 percent in the first quarter, 15.5 percent in the second quarter and a fall of 1.1 percent in the third quarter.
Due to a significant drop in tourist arrivals which cut down the tourism-related expenditures during the pandemic, it is estimated that the tourism economy as measured by Tourism Direct Gross Value Added (TDGVA) plunged by as much as 93.3 percent in the first quarter of FY 2020-21 on the year-on-year basis when the entire country was under complete lockdown.
