Virus to cost world tourism at least $22 bil: global tourism body

The WTO needs to understand that unhealthy people do not travel and spend money.

First health, then money!

And that is just the tourism portion of this virus. We are already seeing very low patronage at Restaurants and Bars in Tokyo.... places were the regular "Taro" would go. The numbers there could prove quite devastating and will hurt the overall economy.

This will only further nationalist agendas in some countries.

Oxford Economics which estimates that the crisis will cost the sector at least $22 billion,

Perhaps some nations will use the US as an example NOT to follow and start to see that healthcare in all its forms needs to be a much higher priority than it is there.

"The Chinese are the tourists who spend most when they travel"

Human lives are FAR MORE important than china-nese money.

Beyond tourism; business meetings, conferences, interpreting services, audio-visual lighting and staging providers, PR agencies and designers, hotels, food and beverage, transportation, entertainment, in fact nearly everyone involved are all facing months of cancellations and/ or postponements. There will be more than a few companies laying off staff or going bust as they do not have cash to cover 4-6 months of overheads, expenses and salaries with no operating income.

China is now starting to complain about some countries blocking their citizens from entering while they do the same to others. You can be sure that soon China will start making crazy claims about this virus and start blaming others as well. So when the do and they will, I hope the world will be united in reminding them that this is their own doing for yet the second time in 17 years.

If there was fairness in this world, China should be sent the bill for this mess.

They've qualified it with "at least" but the number of 22 billion USD sounds low.

To me, estimating it for the whole economy, not just tourism, would make much more sense. Some tourists would have gone to a cancelled event, so we'll count them, but not the locals etc.

Wait a little longer then buy hotel and airline stocks/ETF's.

Silver lining in an otherwise dark cloud.

It's only a setback and tourism is still a growing industry worldwide, having so far gained great amount of profits. Please don't (pretend to) feel victimized while the good news, "gain side" stories remain under-reported.

If people have surplus money they will spend it on something else or take their holidays later.