Reviving tourism industry post-COVID-19: A resilience-based framework.

The COVID-19 pandemic struck the tourism industry severely. Based on the review of 35 papers that studied the tourism industry in the wake of the pandemic, we propose a resilience-based framework for reviving the global tourism industry post-COVID-19. Our framework outlines four prominent factors for building resilience in the industry: government response, technology innovation, local belongingness, and consumer and employee confidence. We argue that using such inclusive resilience; the tourism industry may transform into a new global economic order characterized by sustainable tourism, society's well-being, climate action, and the involvement of local communities. We also offer directions for future research in the area.

Introduction

The outbreak of COVID-19 has posed critical health challenges worldwide. The pandemic is one of the most highly contagious outbreaks in recent human history, with more than 46 million cases and 1.2 million deaths (as on 31st October 2020) (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/). Given the high speed of transmission of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), governments worldwide have had no other option but to impose lockdowns. The spread of the virus has severely threatened lives, and measures such as lockdowns have posed a critical risk to the masses' livelihoods (Sharma & Mahendru, 2020). The economic shocks of the pandemic are being observed across all industries and sectors worldwide. While some industries can adapt to digital platforms and continue their struggle for survival (Mehrolia, Alagarsamy, & Solaikutty, 2020), a few industries have encountered unprecedented failures due to travel restrictions and social distancing, thereby finding it extremely difficult to survive the pandemic. Tourism is one industry that cannot hold its ground without the mobility of tourists. The fall of 22% in tourist numbers in the first quarter of 2020 (compared to the same quarter of 2019), and the threat of 60% to 80% fall throughout 2020 (compared to 2019), are some indications of the havoc that the COVID-19 pandemic can cause for the global tourism industry (World Tourism Organization, 2020). Tourism is one of the most labour-intensive sectors. Such a slowdown for the industry may put millions of jobs at risk, thereby threatening to roll back the progress made on the front of sustainable development goals (World Tourism Organization, 2020).

As indicated by Rivera (2020), examining the hospitality and tourism industries in the pandemic context is of paramount importance. Researchers have started to focus on this area, yet there is only limited work available so far. A search query on the Web of Science database yielded no more than 45 results that studied the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry. These studies are also observed to be all over the place, which poses a directional challenge for scholarship in the area. Such variance in studies fails to significantly enrich the body of knowledge, thereby proving to be of limited use to policymakers and practitioners.

The WHO (2017) recommends rapid reviews to provide timely evidence for policymakers to respond to the emergency. Since the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to be particularly fatal for the tourism industry, a rapid review of the available literature is highly recommended. Such a review will not merely consolidate the findings of the existing studies but also provide insights and directions for future researchers to focus on the appropriate problems plaguing the sector.

The above discussion drives our motivation to perform a review of the challenges being faced by the global tourism industry in the wake of COVID-19. The research questions for our study are set as follows:

To observe the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry by studying the emerging body of knowledge in the field;

To suggest a policy framework that enables market players and governments worldwide to cope with the challenges emerging for the global tourism industry from the outbreak of the pandemic.

Out of the 47 papers found on the Web of Science database, we discovered that 10 do not meet the inclusion criteria (detailed in the methodology section). We rigorously reviewed 37 papers to synthesize their findings and propose a framework for further advancement of the scholarship in this area. Our results reveal that the pandemic has created severe roadblocks for the tourism industry, and the way ahead seems to be rocky. We learn that this challenge may open the doors for local tourism, eco-tourism, and sustainable tourism, which have long been part of the discussion but have failed to take any tangible shape so far. Four significant themes emerge from our work, namely, sustainable tourism, climate action, transformation to the new global economic order, and resilience. We make a significant theoretical and practical contribution to the field by suggesting a coping-up mechanism, which revolves around resilience. Our framework includes resilience from market players, governments, non-government agencies, and all other stakeholders.

The remainder of our paper is organized as follows: The next section discusses the methodology of our work, the third section presents the thematic discussion, the fourth section highlights the future research agenda, and the last section concludes by outlining the policy framework to deal with the challenges emerging from COVID-19 for the tourism industry.

Methodology

The systematic reviewing methodology is followed in this paper. The advent of this methodology in the field of management is recent (Paul & Criado, 2020; Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart, 2003). This methodology is driven by its merits in the form of systematic, transparent, and replicable review (Cook, Greengold, Ellrodt, & Weingarten, 1997; Cook, Mulrow, & Haynes, 1997; Hao & al, 2019; Wolf, Shea, & Albanese, 2001). It is also inspired by prior review articles (Bansal, Garg, & Sharma, 2019; Dhaliwal, Singh, & Paul, 2020; Gilal, Zhang, Paul, & Gilal, 2019; Jain, Sharma, & Mahendru, 2019; Paul & Feliciano-Cestero, 2020; Paul & Mas, 2020; Rosado-Serrano, Paul, & Dikova, 2018; Talan & Sharma, 2019; Thomas & Paul, 2019).

Records were searched employing the Web of Science database. The usage of this database ensures a consistent standard for the articles. Using keywords like “COVID-19,” “tourism,” “hospitality,” and “coronavirus,” we found 47 records. Since the problem of COVID-19 pertains to 2020, the records are fewer in number. Nevertheless, given the mandate of the WHO for rapid reviews, we consider it worthwhile to conduct a review in this pivotal field. These records were then screened through titles and abstracts. It was discovered that 37 papers fell within our theme, while the remaining 10 did not. These 37 papers were selected for further analysis. These papers are shown in Table 1 .

Table 1

Reviewed papers.

Study	Type of paper	Context	Source
Assaf and Scuderi (2020)	Editorial	Role of government in reviving tourism sector	Tourism Economics
Baum and Hai (2020)	Conceptual	The freedom to engage in hospitality and tourism in areas of Asia, Europe, and North America has been unprecedentedly impacted during the pandemic	International Journal Of Contemporary Hospitality Management
Benjamin, Dillette, and Alderman (2020)	Conceptual	An actionable contribution to equity to bring about the transformation of tourism	Tourism Geographies
Brouder (2020)	Conceptual	Sufficient institutional progress on both the demand and supply side of tourism can facilitate the development of new routes	Tourism Geographies
Brouder et al. (2020)	Editorial	The response to the contemporary challenge would help the industry rebuild itself	Tourism Geographies
Buckley (2020)	Letter to editor	Conservation implications of COVID-19	Biological Conservation
Carr (2020)	Conceptual	Indigenous informed methods will contribute significantly to the transformation of the global tourism industry	Tourism Geographies
Chang, McAleer, and Ramos (2020)	Editorial	The paper presents a charter for tourism, travel, and hospitality after COVID-19 as a contribution to the industry	Sustainability
Cheer (2020)	Conceptual	Human prosperity needs more complex collections of strategies to assess the impact of tourism on host communities	Tourism Geographies
Chen, Huang, and Li (2020)	Conceptual	Nine key themes were established, including the effect on tourism, people's emotions, management of tourism and cultural venues, the position of the hospitality industry, national command and local reaction, tourism conflicts and remedies, corporate self-improvement initiatives, government assistance, and post-crisis tourism product	Current Issues in Tourism
Crossley (2020)	Conceptual	Ecological sadness may be compared to optimism for environmental repair	Tourism Geographies
Everingham and Chassagne (2020)	Conceptual	The pandemic presents an incentive to reconsider tourism otherwise, away from exploitative models that ignore individuals, places, and the natural world, and toward tourism with constructive impacts.	Tourism Geographies
Gallego and Font (2020)	Empirical	In too unpredictable circumstances, Big Data offers timely granular required data	Journal of Sustainable Tourism
Galvani, Lew, and Perez (2020)	Conceptual	By converging economics with biology, philosophy, and neurology, sustainability targets may be incrementally attained over time.	Tourism Geographies
Gössling, Scott, and Hall (2020)	Conceptual	For interrelated reasons of risks incurred in global travel and the sector's exposure to climate change, the ‘COVID19 pandemic could contribute to a crucial reconsideration of the global volume growth model for tourism.’	Journal Of Sustainable Tourism
Gretzel et al. (2020)	Conceptual	Impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus call for ground-breaking e-Tourism studies	Information Technology & Tourism
Hall, Scott, and Gössling (2020)	Conceptual	The selective nature of the effects of COVID19 and the steps to control it can lead to tourism reorientation, but in others, it will contribute to policies that represent the selfish nationalism of some countries	Tourism Geographies
Haywood (2020)	Conceptual	Despite the debilitating effects of COVID-19, there are emerging new ways of unity that question the existing ethic of competitiveness	Tourism Geographies
Higgins-Desbiolles (2020)	Conceptual	The study presents a vision focused on a community-centered tourism system that redefines and reorients tourism based on local communities' rights and interests	Tourism Geographies
Iaquinto (2020)	Conceptual	The perspectives of mobility are important to understanding the effect of COVID-19 on global tourism	Dialogues In Human Geography
Ioannides and Gyimóthy (2020)	Conceptual	The tourism industry is likely to recover from this sudden market shock mainly due to various forms of government interference	Tourism Geographies
Lapointe (2020)	Conceptual	A connexion between tourism and the needs of the host communities	Tourism Geographies
Lew, Cheer, Haywood, Brouder, and Salazar (2020)	Comments from guest editors	The paper provides a vision of how the environment is shifting, developing, and transitioning into something new than before the global pandemic experience of 2020.	Tourism Geographies
Mao, He, Morrison, and Andres Coca-Stefaniak (2020)	Empirical	Corporate social responsibility had positive impacts on employee self-efficacy, hope, resilience, and optimism through employee satisfaction with corporate COVID-19 responses	Current Issues In Tourism
McCartney (2020)	Conceptual	The recovery wave should shift to public-private privatization and collaboration	Current Issues In Tourism
Mostafanezhad, Cheer, and Sin (2020)	Conceptual	Historical geographies of ethnicity, contemporary geo-economic relations, and the broader pivot to the Asia Pacific region mediate the geopolitical anxieties of tourism	Dialogues In Human Geography
Nepal (2020)	Conceptual	In countries like Nepal, ways of doing tourism business need to move if we want to be able to survive COVID-19 in the future, like a crisis	Tourism Geographies
Niewiadomski (2020)	Conceptual	The temporary deglobalization processes give the tourism industry an unparalleled opportunity for a reboot, an unrepeatable opportunity to redevelop in line with the values of sustainability and to remove multiple ‘dark sides’ of the growth of tourism, such as environmental degradation, economic exploitation, or overcrowding	Tourism Geographies
Prideaux, Thompson, and Pabel (2020)	Conceptual	By adopting a ‘flattening the curve’ strategy instead of flight, the success of techniques to flatten the COVID-19 curve points to the ability to combat climate change	Tourism Geographies
Renaud (2020)	Conceptual	Concepts of global mobility and local mobility, power relations with destination communities, can be criticised to demonstrate that the former, necessary for the deployment of mass cruise tourism, is a weakness for the industry in a post-pandemic view of reduced mobility	Tourism Geographies
Rivera (2020)	Empirical	Pandemic COVID-19 could temporarily immobilise our collective activities but will not restrict the community from validating research ideas	International Journal Of Hospitality Management
Romagosa (2020)	Conceptual	The challenge for sustainable global tourism will be to strike a balance between sustaining activity in rich countries while preventing overcrowding and taking activity to emerging countries, some of which are reliant on the sector and markets that will need a lot of incentives to recover	Tourism Geographies
Rowen (2020)	Conceptual	Examining transformational festivals may provide theoretical tools to turn tourism into a more responsible and sustainable activity	Tourism Geographies
Stankov, Filimonau, and Vujičić (2020)	Conceptual	The tourism industry has the opportunity to embrace the movement of consciousness, confidence in its ability to focus on current issues and pave a new path toward more compassionate and meaningful tourism for hosts and guests alike	Tourism Geographies
Tremblay-Huet (2020)	Conceptual	A deeper awareness of the problems by remote communities and behaving accordingly	Tourism Geographies
Trupp and Dolezal (2020)	Conceptual	The article discusses the situation of the tourism sector in Southeast Asia and discusses the ties between tourism and sustainability during the pandemic times	Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies
Tsionas (2020)	Conceptual	it is very feasible to reopen gradually requiring only non-negative profits, but it is considerably more challenging to reopen requiring the same level of profit as in the pre-COVID-19 period, and it seems feasible to reopen at capacity near 33%	Tourism Economics

To arrive at the appropriate themes studied in the selected papers, we ran a cluster analysis on these papers' keywords through the VOS viewer project developed by Leiden University, the Netherlands. Through this approach, we came up with four clusters, namely, sustainable tourism, climate action, transformation to the new global economic order, and resilience. We use these clusters as the themes for our work, and group the keywords of the 35 records within these themes, which drive the thematic discussion of our study.

This analysis leads to the development of three clusters as detailed in Table 2 .

Table 2

Keywords and clusters.

S No	Keyword	Cluster
1	climate change	COVID-19 challenges for the global tourism industry
2	geopolitics
3	pandemic
4	reset
5	transformation
6	COVID-19	Resilience
7	degrowth
8	destination
9	globalization
10	mobility
11	resilience
12	sustainable tourism
13	community	Transformation to the new global economic order
14	Future
15	Globalization
16	Sustainability
17	Tourism

Thematic discussion

Fig. 1 exhibits the prominent keywords clustered into three groups. First, the focus of research has been around the future of tourism, wherein the body of knowledge is concerned about the future of tourism sector, specifically in the context of communities and the cause of sustainability. Second, the scholarship is engaged in deliberating on the issues of resilience, mobility, degrowth, and sustainable tourism. Finally, there is an ongoing discussion around geopolitics, climate change, and transformation to the new situation through a reset of the sector. We use these keywords to draw two major themes, comprising four sub-themes, as exhibited in Fig. 2 . This thematic discussion is presented below.

Fig. 1

Clusters of keywords used by the reviewed literature.

Fig. 2

Thematic framework.

Resilience

The business world recognizes resilience as a crisis management tool/strategy for business stability and adaptability to all types of risks, during natural disasters and emergencies. Furthermore, business resilience is linked to the organization's ability to adapt to the environment and new circumstances to mitigate the effects of the incident (Supardi, Kudus, Hadi, & Indonesia, 2020). Resilience strategies require coordination, various crisis management techniques, good relationships (among all stakeholders), a comprehensive network, recognition of risks and opportunities, and timely and scalable intervention (Alves, Lok, Luo, & Hao, 2020; Fitriasari, 2020). The literature on resilience identifies proactive, absorptive/adaptive, reactive, or dynamic attributes of resilience (Supardi et al., 2020).

Historically, the tourism industry has quickly bounced back after disasters, pandemics, and epidemics like Ebola, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Local, regional, or national governments are aiding in the industry's recovery by luring investors through tax breaks, lenient land-use rules, etc. (Brouder, 2020; Ioannides & Gyimóthy, 2020). Before international travel can resume, domestic tourism will boost the resumption of the tourism industry in the wake of the pandemic. Other factors, including technological resilience, local belongingness, and customer and employee confidence, may help build industry resilience, which is the need of the hour.

Governments' response to COVID-19: A new outlook

Businesses across industries are looking forward to “business as usual”, and the tourism industry is no exception. All the industries are banking largely upon “government stimulus packages and interventions” to improve their productivity. For instance, TUI, the world's most prominent multinational tourism organization, is taking the UK and German governments' aid and has announced cost reduction in its operations across the world (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). The government has become a significant role player in the economy of tourism (Table 3). This has resulted in the re-nationalization of airlines, tourism firms, and networks like airports. This is something different in comparison to earlier crises, which created curiosity in research and institutions and had no “policy impact,” particularly in the tourism industry (Hall et al., 2020). Tsionas (2020) discusses post-COVID-19 problems and mentions that “opening at limited capacity” of almost 33% is a good option. He proposes that government subsidies would be needed to support such lower capacities. There has been massive government intervention in the working and operation of the tourism industry during the COVID-19 crisis (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). Discussing Macao's reaction to the pandemic in a “3-wave analogy,” McCartney (2020) observes that the wave of recovery will push toward “public-private partnership and cooperation.” In future, the effect of such governmental response on tourism will create a novel outlook.

Table 3

Government response to COVID-19. (Source : OEDC, 2020)

Country	The response of the government and industry to COVID-19
Austria	The Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Regions and Tourism along with the Austrian Bank for Tourism Development has introduced a coronavirus package for tourism
Belgium	If a traveler's holiday package is called off, customers may be offered a credit coupon of the equal amount instead of a valid refund for at least a year.
Brazil	The National Development Bank has opened a working capital loan in the tourism industry for SMEs. An airline relief package has also been prepared.
Canada	The Canadian Experiences Fund (CEF) has offered funds worth CAD 1 million for easing stress on indigenous tourism businesses.
Chile	Packages including tax payment deferrals, flexibilities in tax payment, and other ways of offering more liquidity to the organizations affected badly, were introduced. SMEs in the country, particularly the tourism sector, will get the advantage of these packages
Colombia	A communication channel has been introduced with the global authorities of tourism in Latin American and tourism organizations to communicate information relating to good practices
Costa Rica	The Costa Rican Tourism Institute announced a three-month tax suspension on air ticket sales and income generated per tourist for organizations that request for non-payment because of liquidity problems from April to July 2020
Estonia	The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications in collaboration with the Kredex Foundation (a public financing institution for Estonian businesses) and Enterprise Estonia has created a EUR 25 million “aid package” to aid the tourism industry
European union	For the tourism industry, the EU has offered benefits like liquidity support, fiscal relief, and easing of state aid rules
France	The Prime Minister declared that the government will add EUR 18 billion to the “Marshall Plan for Tourism” for the tourism industry
Germany	The Federal Government Centre of Excellence for Tourism has developed an information webpage relating to COVID-19's effects on the tourism industry (https://corona-navigator.de/).
Greece	The Ministry of Tourism has established a Crisis Management Committee for Coronavirus
Indonesia	The government has offered $725 million stimulus package for tourism revival
Italy	The government offered a EUR 4 billion bailout package for the industry of tourism to reintroduce Italy's image to the world
Japan	After the end of COVID-19, the Japan Tourism Agency will offer USD 2.2 billion to build tourist destinations and make them attractive by developing the travel environment, and encouraging international tourists
Korea	The Korean Government introduces financial/fiscal support, relief in taxes, and support for jobs/employment for the tourism industry
New Zealand	NZD 400 million has been granted to a Tourism Recovery Fund (TRF) in Budget 2020
Poland	A campaign “Poland Don't Cancel, Postpone” was started by the Polish Tourism Organization for tourists to use the already purchased services in a convenient date
Singapore	To help the tourism industry, Singapore Tourism Board (STB) has initiated a Tourism Recovery Action Task Force (TRAC) for developing and implementing plans
South Africa	In the hospitality and tourism sector, a relief package of approximately $11 million was introduced for MSMEs
Spain	Deferral of interest and principal payment of loans offered earlier by the Secretariat of State for Tourism.
Switzerland	The Swiss Parliament proposed extra federal funding of CHF 40 million for Switzerland Tourism (ST) for 2020 and 2021
United Kingdom	Presently, in collaboration with the UK government, VisitBritain is working to develop a recovery campaign for promoting UK tourism after COVID-19.
United States	With travel on top, the government has presented a USD 2 trillion stimulus package that is for all businesses

Technology innovation

Technology is a major force in creating flexibility in the tourism industry (Hall et al., 2020). Disasters help in speeding up changes in technology. During COVID-19, people have taken massive aid from technology experts. There are instances of robots replacing people, applications on mobiles being employed to track people's contacts, or Big Data analytics forecasting COVID-19 spread among the masses. Robot, automation technologies, and artificial intelligence can reduce cost, improve liquidity, and enhance flexibility. This will also help maintain social distancing (Assaf & Scuderi, 2020; Thomas & Chopra, 2020), as technology can connect people without any physical contact. Thus, technology can handle pandemic-specific problems such as screening travellers, discovering COVID-19 cases and tracking contacts, ensuring online education for students, etc. (Hall et al., 2020). Many reports show a surge in the public's trust in technology, their readiness to connect, and their willingness to change their attitudes toward technology. People have now started ignoring privacy issues to get a more significant technology benefit (Stankov et al., 2020). Gretzel et al. (2020) has presented the “six transformative e-tourism research pillars” for bringing in changes in e-tourism by proactively using IT resources for short-term and long-term purposes.

Local belongingness

The global aspect seems broken that calls for local belongingness to come to the rescue (Brouder et al., 2020; Chang et al., 2020). During the pandemic and post-COVID-19, domestic tourism is poised to dominate the scene with most travellers coming from nearby areas (Haywood, 2020). In many places, domestic travel is limited to visiting friends and relatives, but this will expand to leisure tourism soon. International travel will gradually revive when the borders open and international flights are permitted to operate without any hindrances (Baum & Hai, 2020). Many countries and regions have restricted movements by imposing bans and other stringent requirements on entry and exit, which has subtly impacted the global tourism industry. According to Higgins-Desbiolles (2020) and Baum and Hai (2020), the right to travel or enjoy gainful employment in the hospitality and tourism industry will not be allowed in the near-immediate future. “Tourism bubbles,” or local links built during the disaster, will act as a flexible plan. Future travel will depend on combined self-care, such as the suggestion to open the Trans-Tasman bubble between Australia and New Zealand (Carr, 2020), or the potential fast-tracking of immigration clearance between the Republic of Korea and China (Mostafanezhad et al., 2020). The feeling of belongingness among locals will dictate terms for the revival of the tourism industry.

Consumer and employee confidence

It is essential to gain consumer confidence to restart the halted industry of tourism. Learning from disaster planning and fighting the drive to turn away from failures experienced in the future are the critical pathways to be followed (Rivera, 2020). The revival of the tourism industry will depend on boosting confidence in travelling and lessening the perception of risk involved (Assaf & Scuderi, 2020). The impact of COVID-19 influences consumers' perception of tourism product and services (Yu et al., 2020). Mao et al. (2020) focuses on human capital and gaining employee confidence.

Transformation to the new global economic order

Transformations like restarting, reorganizing, and assimilating the tourism industry according to the latest standards and rules are required to revive the industry (Lew et al., 2020). The renewal will be impacted by the government's response to climate change and the need for a carbon-free economy. After the pandemic, the global economic and political systems will encompass changing patterns concerning climate change mitigation, sustainable tourism, local communities, and society's well-being.

Sustainable tourism

The present times are the most appropriate to promote a sustainable and equitable tourism industry (Benjamin et al., 2020). As per Carr (2020), original cultural sites suggest happiness, physical condition, environmental responsibility, and conventional ecological information. Such sites form the future of “cultural sustainability” and it is essential to manage these prudently for the development of the economy. In the aftermath of COVID-19, the tourism industry is bound to be reorganized based on actual planning and not just paperwork. The industry needs to be oriented toward education, environmental and social justice, and racial healing. There is a need for wary people (For instance, tourists, local communities, SMEs, Government) to take advantage of the present grave situation as it will allow more tourist experiences. The industry's service providers need to be encouraged to push a new demand by changing their unsustainable product offers. Such measures can connect, support, and take care of the whole tourism industry to everyone's advantage (Stankov et al., 2020). The market players should also confront the means and systems that will prevent and transform harmful and weak tourism (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). There is an essential requirement for a charter for setting up a stable and sustainable tourism industry. There is a disconnect between what UNWTO (World Tourism Organization) is preaching (sustainability) and what is exercising (growth expansion). These disconnects need to be understood and repaired before considering tourism's future (Brouder et al., 2020; Nepal, 2020). The ongoing impermanent process of deglobalization has presented the tourism industry with a unique opportunity to recreate sustainability by leaving aside the “dark sides” of recent years, such as environmental deprivation, economic abuse, or congestion (Niewiadomski, 2020). Sustainability is a continuous procedure to attain positive outcomes and is defined by changing beliefs, wishes, information, skills, and public awareness (Galvani et al., 2020). Expert knowledge and experience (Chang et al., 2020; Prideaux et al., 2020) need to be put into practice for shifting toward sustainable tourism.

Well-being of society

The South American concept Buen Vivir was examined by Everingham and Chassagne (2020). This is a non-Western alternative to neoliberal capitalism for moving tourism priorities from economic growth to the welfare of, and meaningful connections in, the society at large and covering the ecological balance. The impact of COVID-19 is such that how people live and travel has changed completely. Preferences are now shifting toward connecting and shopping locally. The virus has offered an opportunity to the tourism industry to recreate and contribute to society's welfare (Benjamin et al., 2020; Rowen, 2020). Life, health, environment, etc., are the focused areas during disasters. According to Benjamin et al. (2020), it is essential to select a program that encourages sustainable and equitable development where people can acknowledge the planet and shift their current unsustainable views on tourism. In addition, Benjamin et al. (2020) point out that the change should concentrate on equity. This will necessitate positive and slow changes relating to systems' interconnectedness, where economic growth is not considered a default parameter of social and ecological well-being (Cheer, 2020). The scholarship in the field of tourism needs to acknowledge tourism as an industry with a focus on societal well-being (Benjamin et al., 2020).

Climate action

The pandemic's effect is worsening due to global climate changes (Sharma et al., 2020; Sharma & Mahendru, 2020; Sharma, Talan, Srivastava, Yadav, & Chopra, 2020). Crossley (2020) studies the connection between pandemic and climate change and explores how the damage done to the environment can be repaired and can be attached to ecological grief. Emotional dynamics can further help understand tourists' behavior, covering the constant “attitude-behavior” gap concerning sustainable tourism. COVID-19 offers an opportunity to tackle the impact of climate change by shifting from the present model of “high resource consumption” to one that is “environmentally friendly” (Gössling et al., 2020; Prideaux et al., 2020).

Local communities – the centres of transformation.

Local communities are the centres of transformation for the tourism industry during this pandemic. There may be future disagreements in local areas as tourists take the help of these local communities and governments for their business. Changes being considered by tourist destinations relating to modifications in a carbon-free economy are significant (Rideau et al., 2020). Changes at the local level may help restore neocolonial and neoliberal biases (Everingham & Chassagne, 2020; Renaud, 2020; Tremblay-Huet, 2020).

Since the tourism industry has come to a halt and social distancing acts are relevant, even small-scale local-level activity is considered harmful. People have to think about the local community at large (Lapointe, 2020). According to Renaud (2020), the industry of cruise tourism should approve a “local mobility” model, which means that large cruise ships will be forbidden, but a fleet of smaller ships will be allowed. During the pandemic, social unity, self-sacrifice, and a sympathetic attitude are as significant as wearing a face mask to protect oneself and others. Post-COVID-19 times will allow service providers to rethink and reset the tourism industry for the future. There is a need for a “community-centered tourism framework” with responsible approaches to reset, redescribe, and refamiliarize the tourism industry in the interest of local communities. A deeper understanding of remote communities' challenges and acts may help transform the sector (Tremblay-Huet, 2020). Some research studies consider these times as a defining moment for resetting the industry of tourism (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). Developed countries are considering domestic or “proximity tourism” based on local thought and local acting theory.

A resilience-based framework for the new global economic order

Based on literature review, we propose a resilience-based framework for the new global economic order (Fig. 3 ). This framework stems from the challenges posed by COVID-19 and the containment measures (such as lockdown) to the global tourism industry. The advisories issued to the tourists by various governments have further added fuel to the fire, resulting in the decline of revenues (World Tourism Organization, 2020). The tourism industry seems to have moved from “over-tourism” to “non-tourism” at once (Gössling et al., 2020). The increasing unemployment in other sectors of the global economy will also reflect in the number of tourist visits in the coming years. Segments of the tourism industry, including airlines, hospitality, sports events, restaurants, and cruises, are bound to be hammered by the pandemic. The proposed resilience-based framework can help transform the industry both during and after COVID-19.

Fig. 3

Resilience-based framework for the new global economic order.

Organizational studies are focusing on sustainable change deal with resilience and deployment of adaptive capabilities by providing insights into recovery responses. Crises and emergencies such as COVID-19 also extend global visibility and understanding. This pandemic will contribute to creating new business models, which will essentially determine the industry's chances of survival by transforming it into a much more sustainable form. The tourism industry needs to demonstrate resilience from several sides. We broadly propose that three segments, namely, governments, market players, and local communities, need to get their act together to lend resilience to the industry. Technological innovations need to rise to a higher level for speeding up creations in tourism and hospitality. Artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things (IoT), and technologies relating to location, navigation, drones, and robotics, are a few areas that need enhancements. This can promote flexible thinking within the tourism industry. This pandemic has compelled industry leaders to explore and analyze other better-suited technologies to reboot the industry and regain consumer confidence. Existing literature notes that the tourism industry has previously been quick to bounce back from the shocks of epidemics, pandemics, and global crises. However, governments realize that the shock of COVID-19 is unique since it is not possible to market the unsold capacity in coming years, causing a permanent setback for the industry. Governments should strive to build an atmosphere in which they attract investors through a variety of opportunities in the prevalent spirit of neoliberalism, such as offering tax breaks, relaxing strict land-use laws, etc. (Brouder, 2020). Governments may promote the local embeddedness of tourism businesses to improve the element of belongingness. Supporting these arguments, Di Domenico, Haugh, and Tracey (2010) observe that local economies react to crises by working together and through social work, and Johannisson and Olaison (2007) note that rural firms have better prospects of recovery than their urban counterparts. Henceforth, the support from the government, coupled with local belongingness, may pave the way for the transformation of the tourism industry. The challenge is different for large-scale multinational players in the industry, focusing on local supply chains to minimize the costs. They may need to review their activities and rely on narrower and sub-national supply chains. This may include sourcing more resources locally, be it food, raw materials, service providers, or the composition of the workforce. Post-pandemic times may entail a long-term decrease in the appeal of certain growth spots now deemed too risky. Such a situation may augur well for less popular, less populated regions by providing them the opportunity to improve their appeal as potential tourism destinations.

Resilience from all sides of the value-chain may transform the tourism industry into the new global economic order characterized by sustainable tourism, climate action, societal well-being, and involvement of local communities. Studies have observed that the tourism industry indirectly contributes to pandemics in multiple ways, including food wastages leading to industrialized food production (Hall & Gössling, 2013), human interference with wildlife and deforestation (Barlow et al., 2016; Lade et al., 2020), and climate change conditions (Scott, Hall, & Gössling, 2019). The lockdown in many countries and the adoption of significant restrictions on borders has also drastically affected the tourism economy worldwide. The movement from “over-tourism” to “under-tourism” is bound to reverse the scene of climate change to a large extent (Hall & Gössling, 2013). COVID-19 is leading to some positive outcomes for the tourism industry. Declined demand in the aviation industry is already causing airlines to phase out outdated aircraft. Restrictions on overseas travel for international students, business travellers, political leaders, etc., are leading to increased leverage from video-conferencing (Banister & Stead, 2004; Cohen, Hanna, & Gössling, 2018). These changes are bound to reorient the global tourism industry in a “sustainable” way, which focuses more on inclusive development, rather than the abstract notion of “growth.” Carbon footprint reductions may gain more traction worldwide, as is already seen across main tourist destinations. Similarly, the mobility of visitors could transform significantly, not only in the immediate future but over a long period. The relentless neophilia and the disturbing desire for (often irresponsible) exploration in distant places may be replaced by recreation and travel much closer to home.

Future research agenda

COVID-19 has triggered unprecedented casualties for mankind in life-changing circumstances. The shock and effect of this pandemic are so strong that research work across all fields is subject to pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 classifications. The post-COVID-19 research is bound to be characterized by economic, environmental, and social setbacks, and the policy suggestions to counter those. Given the tourism industry's sensitivity to this pandemic situation, the body of knowledge in the field of tourism needs some quick and sound work to prepare for the future. Following most downloaded review articles (Dhaliwal et al., 2020; Paul & Benito, 2018), we provide directions for future research in this section to set up an interesting future research agenda for the research in the tourism industry in the post-COVID-19 period. It is important to examine how businesses can translate this crisis chaos into transformative innovation. Never before has tourism research felt the need to hold its purpose as much as today.

Post-crisis tourism research must align academic and corporate interests. We present the future research agenda in two segments. One, based on the gaps in the existing literature, we present the research questions for tourism research to explore different sub-topics in the context of COVID-19. Two, we present a research agenda to test our resilience-based framework (Table 4 ) and derive propositions which can be used as testable hypotheses in future studies by others.

Table 4

Themes and research questions for future scholarship in tourism and COVID-19.

Theme	Research Question
Impact of the pandemic on tourism sector	1. What has been the magnitude of the loss for various stakeholders in the tourism industry so far in terms of economy, employment, trust, etc.?
	2. In the tourism industry, which geographical areas have been affected the most due to this pandemic? Which players were able to mitigate the crisis? Which strategies did they employ?
	3. Does the worst seem to be over or is it yet to come for the tourism industry?
Post-pandemic recovery of the sector	1. It is anticipated that domestic demand will fuel the recovery of the tourism industry post-COVID-19 (Assaf & Scuderi, 2020). How far can this anticipation be validated?
	2. What measures should be taken by governments across the globe for transforming the tourism industry in the post-crisis scenario?
Resilience and sustainability of the tourism sector	1. Which factors can contribute to making the tourism industry resilient enough to bounce back in the post-COVID-19 times?
	2. How can the tourism industry use this crisis as an opportunity to take a more sustainable form (Haywood, 2020; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020; Ioannides & Gyimóthy, 2020)?
Tourism and technology	1. How can e-tourism be used to: (a) better forecast markets, model scenarios, and understand risks using innovative business intelligence solutions for destinations and tourism providers; (b) cater to changes in consumer behavior and likely interaction mode (Gretzel et al., 2020)?

Future researchers may test the resilience-based framework in line with Fig. 3. Using the tenets included in the resilience framework, we derive propositions in this study which can be used as either research questions or hypotheses in future studies.

Tourism industry has to resort to internal measures, including technology innovation and building consumer and employee confidence, to build resilience to fight COVID-19;

External factors, including government measures and local belongingness, significantly contribute to the tourism industry's quest for resilience to revive from the COVID-19 shock;

Resilience strategies based on internal and external factors mediate the revival of the tourism industry from the shock of COVID-19 by transforming it to the new global economic order, which comprises sustainable tourism, the well-being of society, mitigating climate change, and strengthening of local communities.

These topical ideations can be actualized by applying versatile methodologies. The case-study method is by far the most prominently used method in tourism research in the context of a crisis. However, as suggested by most of the related works (Haywood, 2020; Nepal, 2020; Rivera, 2020; Tsionas, 2020), it would be advisable to employ conceptual, quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods to inform the questions about the contemporary tourism industry.

Conclusion

The tourism industry was seen as a major cause and carrier of the novel coronavirus that triggered the outbreak of COVID-19. The unsustainable practices of the industry didn't help the cause of sustainable living worldwide. The pandemic has nearly brought the global tourism industry to a halt. All stakeholders in the industry must work together to make the industry sufficiently resilient to deal with the crisis. Based on the studies conducted to understand the tourism industry in the context of COVID-19, we propose a resilience-based framework for the industry. Through our framework, we argue that with the help of the resilient approach from governments, market players, technology innovators, and the workforce employed in the industry, the tourism sector may end up evolving in a much more sustainable way post-pandemic. The involvement of local communities is going to be immensely critical in this journey, as the restrictions on international travel may stay longer than anticipated. Such developments would widen not only the base of the tourism industry but also present opportunities for less-developed tourism spots to grow further. Large-scale tourism players would need a reboot to survive in post-pandemic times. Still, acting in line with our resilience-based framework, small-scale players certainly can emerge victorious and ensure the well-being of the society at large while also facilitating sustainable tourism.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

The authors declare that no funding were received for this research.