THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The tourism sector has pitched the idea for considering its frontline workers for early Covid-19 vaccination after health workers and essential services like police, along with groups with co-morbidities. The prolonged shutdown due to Covid, two back-to-back floods and Nipah scare, have bled the sector beyond imagination.
Economic stagnation especially in the tourism sector has given untold hardship to various stakeholders. “For a state like Kerala, a healthy, robust tourism industry is critical to overall recovery of the economy as it contributes over 10 per cent of the GDP. So frontline tourism workers in travel and tourism should be given priority for vaccination,” said E M Najeeb, chairperson, Confederation of Kerala Tourism Industry and IATO senior vice-president.
Tourism director P Balakiran told TNIE: “the department will soon submit a proposal to the government to consider frontline tourism workers for Covid vaccination after giving preventive shots to essential workers as well as persons in vulnerable age and health categories.” Already, the state has incurred a loss of `20-25k crore during 2020 due to the pandemic.
According to the economic review of Kerala government, the state tourism sector had rebounded strongly in 2019 after the floods of 2018 and 2019 and witnessed the highest growth rate in domestic and foreign tourist arrivals in the last 24 years. There was 8.52 per cent growth in foreign tourist arrivals and 17.81 per cent growth in domestic tourist arrivals in 2019 over 2018 in the state.However, 2020 saw a dip in foreign tourist arrivals from 9,01,971 to 3,49,575, registering a decline of 61% during January-September. The domestic sector witnessed a decline of 75% during the period.