EU Most Vulnerable Economies from the Tourism Sector Perspective: a Macroeconomic Approach

Despite the resilience shown in recent decades, tourism is one of the sectors most affected by the Covid-19 crisis: many businesses in this area have interrupted or diminished their activity in the last months, and the tourist flows have decreased drastically, especially for the international tourism, either due to objective factors– regulations and restrictions, or subjective ones – tourist behaviour. Europe is the biggest international tourism market, and the European Union includes one of the most important tourist destinations, but also countries or regions where tourism is a key industry. The real impact of the health crisis in this sector is still the subject of complex analysis, and the evolution of the pandemic and its effects still offer only the possibility of estimated assessments at this time, as proved by repeated revisions of the economic reports. Moreover, the real impact of this crisis is difficult to be quantified or decoupled from the evolution of the European economies as a whole and its contagion effects. In this paper, we propose an assessment of the vulnerability of the EU through the contribution and impact of the tourism industry in member states' economies. Based on the statistical data of World Travel and Tourism Council and own calculations, we examine the main factors that can influence the resilience of economies through the tourism industry: the direct and total contribution of tourism in GDP, the direct and total contribution of tourism in employment, the share of exports of tourist services in total exports, the share of international tourism in internal tourism consumption.