Forecasting Tourism in the EU after the COVID-19 Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has restricted both business and social life over the last two years. Stop-and-go policies enacted as containment measures have further impacted the global economy, and tourism in particular. Tourism demand shows only weak signs of a sustainable recovery. The medium-term outlook remains highly uncertain, and yet few studies have addressed the development of the tourism and leisure industries in the years ahead. In this context, we forecast demand in selected EU countries in terms of total expenditure on outbound travel (tourism imports) using a panel pooled Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS) approach. Baseline and downside scenarios are elaborated to project demand for foreign travel until 2025.