Chapter 2: Crisis Leadership: What Do We Know by Now?

The tourism sector has been one of the hardest hit sectors by the current pandemic (Lew, Cheer, Haywood, Brouder, & Salazar, 2020; Nicola et al., 2020). Travel within and outside the countries had come to a standstill and recent research by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) (2020) predicts that a total of 98.2 million jobs could be lost in the travel and tourism sector with a loss of $2,686 billion in global GDP. Meanwhile, global visitor numbers would drop by 41% for international arrivals and by 26% for domestic arrivals. It quickly becomes clear what consequences this scenario would have for many countries and regions of the world whose economies are heavily dependent on a flourishing tourism sector. Moreover, as the tourism sector does not work in isolation but is part of a supply chain, the emergence of the above-mentioned scenario would bring about further negative consequences, such as catering, laundry and travel services (Gössling, Scott, & Hall, 2020).