Impact of Covid-19 on Tourism Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic presents an unprecedented challenge to many businesses around the world, leading to a devastating economic disruption. It has specifically brought a huge destructive impact on the travel and tourism industry and caused significant effects. Following the lockdown, many countries implemented flight restrictions to China, damaging the travel and tourism industry in China. Being the largest online travel platform in China, Ctrip has experienced an unexpected trough period, and it is under vast financial pressure while also deploying more workers to cope with the huge refunds caused by the outbreak. The surging of cases has pushed the world into great uncertainty with the absence of an effective vaccine, and tourists will not come to China for large-scale tourism out of the mentality of emergency security and panic for the destination. Technology has been an instrumental tool used by industry leaders such as Ctrip to inject life back to the economically-plagued industry. It would be prudent for Ctrip to perpetuate the online popularization efforts to set up the industry in a constructive recovery trajectory. This paper focuses on the political, economical, social, and technological impacts that Covid-19 has brought to the tourism industry as represented by Ctrip.