Abstract
Tourism was affected more than any other economic sector by the pandemic. Tourism fell into a deep crisis - the pandemic illuminated the sector’s weaknesses, but at the same time it was seen as an opportunity for its more sustainable transformation. In this context, in December 2020, EU adopted NextGenerationEU – a temporary recovery instrument to help repair the immediate damage caused by the pandemic. NextGenerationEU has a budget of €750 billion and is implemented through the Recovery and Resilience Facility, thanks to which Member States will receive support of a total value of €723.8 billion after the approval of the so-called National Recovery and Resilience Plans. These plans allow countries to fund key initiatives for the strategic transformation of all economic sectors, incl. tourism. Therefore, the paper considers what place tourism occupies in these plans and to what extent the envisaged policies meet the needs and problems tourism faces after the pandemic. We review and complete a comparative analysis of the place tourism occupies in the plans – it identifies the planned measures and projects, hence the main priorities for the post-pandemic development of EU tourism (sustainability, digitalization, inclusion, etc.) and to what extent the new EU strategic documents, such as the EU Transition Pathway for Tourism, reflect the vision for the future development of the sector of the different EU countries.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Post-Pandemic Tourism Transformations
KEYWORDS
COVID-19, POST-PANDEMIC TOURISM, EU TOURISM, NATIONAL RECOVERY AND RESILIENCE PLAN
