The Russian-Ukrainian War and International Tourism

Abstract

Since the World Health Organization(WHO) declared a pandemic due to the COVID-19 outbreak on March 11, 2020, the international tourism industry has suffered an unprecedented blow. In the international tourism market, which was in a gradual recovery of period, Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, subsequent Western sanctions, and a counterattack by Russia, were enough to cause a new level of uncertainty. After the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine and Moldova closed their airspace, and Western countries imposed measures such as a ban on takeing off and landing and flying in their own airspaces, and the suspension of the code-sharing agreement on planes belonging to Russian airlines. Russia also responded and it has become inevitable for neighboring countries to change air routes. This led to an increase in flight time and an increase in air ticket costs, which negatively affected international tourism. Nevertheless, international air ticketing declined for the two weeks after the outbreak of the war, but demand for international tourism has gradually recovered since then. According to the UN World Tourism Organization's Tourism Recovery Tracker data, the number of international tourist arrivals around the world at the end of 2022 recovered to 65% compared to 2019 before the pandemic, exceeding the expected recovery of 37% to 50% compared to 2019, an estimated scenario announced by the UN World Tourism Organization in January 2022. In particular, the number of international tourist arrivals in Europe has recovered to 80% compared to 2019, indicating a fairly rapid recovery compared to 27% in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the number of international tourist arrivals around the world from January to March 2023 recovered to 80% compared to 2019 before the pandemic, 90% in Europe, and 72% in Central and Eastern Europe. And it can be seen that the recovery is faster not only than experts expected at the beginning of the outbreak of war, but also than the result of the survey on the recovery period of international tourism to the pre-pandemic level, which was surveyed by experts from each country by the UN World Tourism Organization before the outbreak. And the number of Russians entering Korea in 2022, 60,019, which is 17.5% compared to 343,057 in 2019 before the pandemic, and the number of Russian patients using medical institutions in Korea was 9,616 in 2022, which is 32.2% compared to 29,897 in 2019. Although the pace of recovery is not faster than that of other countries, considering that the number of arrivals from January to May 2023 was 60,671, which has already exceeded the annual number of arrivals in 2022, the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war on the Korean inbound tourism market can be seen as insignificant.