IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF TOURISM IN CENTRAL, EASTERN AND SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE (CESEE) COUNTRIES

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought numerous challenges and limitations globally. Countries around the world are facing the negative socio-economic consequences of the global health crisis. As the tourism sector is one of the most important sectors of the global economy and also one of the sectors hardest hit by the crisis, the consequences of the negative impact of this crisis in tourism are very wide. The subject of this paper is to investigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economic effects of tourism in Central, Eastern and Southern European (CESEE) countries. The aim of this paper is to analyse the homogeneity, i.e. heterogeneity of the analysed countries in terms of the negative impacts of the crisis on the economic effects of tourism through the analysis of the reduction of the contribution of tourism to key macroeconomic indicators under the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic. By applying cross-country comparison and cluster analysis, it was concluded that CESEE countries are not homogeneous in this sense, as well as that countries in which the importance of tourism for the national economy is greater are more severely affected by the crisis.