Open AccessOpportunities for tourism recovery and development during and after COVID-19
Author(s) -
Sanda Čorak,
Snježana Boranić Živoder,
Zrinka Marušić
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
tourism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.337
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1849-1545
pISSN - 1332-7461
DOI - 10.37741/t.68.4.5
Subject(s) - tourism , viewpoints , tourism geography , public relations , sustainable tourism , covid-19 , marketing , political science , medical tourism , private sector , sustainable development , business , medicine , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , art , law , visual arts
For many years, tourism scholars have beeninvestigating tourism development issues and disseminating their researchresults through papers published in academic journals. Although there isevidence that their viewpoints are in discrepancy with the viewpoints oftourism practitioners, these inconsistencies were rarely investigated and juxtaposed.As the global health pandemic caused by COVID-19 stopped travel and tourism allover the world, it created time for both groups of tourism experts to reflecton the various opportunities and challenges that the tourism sector will facein the future. Using the qualitative research design, the authors had thechance to collect, analyse and discuss the views of tourism experts on therecovery phase and possible changes to tourism in Croatia. Data was obtainedthrough semi structured interviews of tourism practitioners from public andprivate sectors, and through literary review of published opinion papers byinternational scholars. The aim of the research was focused on the comparisonof their views on the short-term recovery of tourism, as well as the long-termpossibilities to transform the sector towards a more sustainable and moreinclusive sector that is able to utilize the regional competitive advantages inthe best possible way. The research results revealed more similaritiesregarding the attitudes on the recovery during short-term period, as opposed tomore dissimilarity on the long-term future of tourism in Croatia. According tothe research results, the future of tourism would benefit from the experienceand knowledge of both groups combined – practitioners and scholars.