Source: MSN
MEXICO CITY — There were major hurricanes, and the global financial crisis of 2008. There was 9/11, and an array of regional health scares, from SARS to Zika.
But during the decades that he’s been involved in the tourism business in the Caribbean island nation of Sint Maarten, Emil Lee has never seen anything remotely like the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“A switch got flipped,” said Mr. Lee, whose family manages a hotel on Sint Maarten, which shares a 34-square-mile island with the French territory Saint-Martin. “And now there’s no tourism.”
The global travel and tourism industry is in peril.
Layoffs in the sector are mounting at the stunning rate of one million jobs a day, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council, an industry group based in London, with as many as 75 million jobs at “immediate risk.” The industry could lose as much as $2.1 trillion in business by the end of the year, the council said.
Borders have been shut, planes idled, cruise ships docked, tour buses parked and hotels, restaurants, bars, theaters and museums shuttered. Tourist sites that only several weeks ago were teeming with visitors are now eerily still.
In the Caribbean, the impact is already being felt particularly deeply. No other region of the world depends so heavily on tourism.
And among the region’s countries and territories, Sint Maarten, a mostly autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, stands out. Tourism accounts for more than 80 percent of its gross domestic product, according to the latest statistics from the World Tourism Organization, an agency of the United Nations.
At the start of the year, the leaders of the nation’s tourism industry had plenty of reason to be hopeful about the months ahead.
The country, which has a population of about 41,000, had almost regained its balance after being pummeled by Hurricane Irma in 2017. The storm damaged most of the nation’s buildings and crippled the airport, before plowing across the Caribbean and wrecking other islands in its path.
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“We project that roughly 56 percent of our population – 25.5 million people – will be infected with the virus over an eight week period,” Governor Newsom of California wrote on 3/19/2020.
Bali probably also had an income of about 80 percent from tourism. In Lombok it is a bit less. Still, on ‘my beach’ (Mangsit Beach, Lombok) there are 5 hotels. 3 are closed. Two are open with TWO GUESTS EACH (who are trying to see when they can fly out). I have the beach to myself now. Some locals try to catch some fish, usually they catch just something small from the beach. In order to catch more they need to go out in boats. Some do. Inshallah, they will have something for dinner. Not everyone is so lucky. Think about the ‘day-labourers’ of India for instance (and of Jakarta too). May Allah have mercy on us all.
Ameen