Tourism trends emerging from pandemic times

Tourism travel worldwide had been increasing steadily for the last three decades, until the Covid-19 pandemic suddenly stopped human mobility. There has not been a similar global event over the past century which restraint from travelling freely, despite several continental health outbreaks. As a consequence, tourism, travel, and the hospitality services had to pause their activities, facing difficult times for enterprise survival and continuity. Some hospitality companies decided to support the health sector, with hotels and food and beverage services being the most relevant industries to join this unknown health crusade. They provided hotel services and catering options to medical employees who could not return home for fear of contagion. In Mexico, some hotels also offered their facilities as recovery centers for patients who had suffered from Covid-19.

Figures of international tourist arrivals have not recovered, with a prevalent -11% of tourists traveling worldwide, compared to international arrivals in 2019 (UN Tourism Recovery Tracker, 2024). It is not an easy task to regain confidence for safe travel, and tourists’ expectations have changed over the last three years. The shadow of unsafe destinations and countries that suffered deeply from the Covid-19 pandemic makes it difficult to recover the previous number of tourist arrivals. Expectations are that the international travel market will reach pre-pandemic figures in 2024, according to Euromonitor International (Bremner, 2023).

Tourists, who were not travelling for several months or years, have changed their overall travel preferences. The tourism field has been recognizing diverse travelling trends emerging from travelling patterns and tourist preferences. From shorter trips to bleisure, some tourism sectors are gaining popularity, and some other sectors are being rediscovered. Urban destinations, the outdoors and eco-tourism, non-mass tourism, resurgence of entertainment events, and wellbeing destinations are some of the tourism sectors which have been increasing only recently.