Center has urged states to vaccinate tour operators, hotel employees & others urgently

Monday, August 2, 2021

With tourism and hospitality being the most badly affected sectors by COVID-19, all of them are in immediate need of a helping hand for a quick renewal. The centre has urged the states to vaccinate tour operators, hotel employees, drivers and other industry stakeholders on a priority basis to hearten up the tourism sector.

To quote Tourism Secretary Arvind Singh, “We have taken it up with state governments that vaccination of all the tourism related stakeholders — be it drivers, tour operators, hotel employees, hotel management– should be taken up on priority so that we gain a sense of confidence that all the stakeholders in the tourism sector are fully vaccinated.

That will give a sense of confidence to customers who want to go to a safe place. If he/she knows that all the employees and persons he is going to meet are fully vaccinated that will instill a sense of confidence.”

In early 2020, when the first few cases of Coronavirus were reported, the tourism sector started getting uncomfortable. With the nationwide lockdown declared in March 2020, tourism faced the worst crisis that it ever encountered in its history. Instantly, millions of jobs were lost. A sizable number of tour operators had to shut their shops seeing no hopes of early revival.

As per a National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) study, during the first quarter (April-June period) of FY21, 14.5 million jobs were lost, 5.2 million during Q2 and 1.8 million jobs during Q3 as compared to an estimated 34.8 million (direct) jobs in the pre-pandemic period of 2019-20.

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