TOURISM AND COVID-19: A SYSTEMIC DILEMMA

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the tourism sector to stop a global machine that moved 1.46 billion international travellers during 2019 and generated 1.7 trillion dollars in exports. Tourism, which had become a lifeline for many economies hit by the 2008 previous economic crisis, has suffered especially the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic, but at the same time it has become a field of social innovation in which adaptation phenomena have been studied synchronously. These changes will probably change permanently the ways in which we practice and interact, at different levels, with tourism. This article serves at the same time as a presentation of the monographic "Post-COVID-19 Tourism from the Social Sciences" that Barataria has facilitated us to coordinate and as a theoretical reflection on how the pandemic has impacted tourism as a total social fact. The general agreement, in the contributions to this number, of certain conclusions is a good indicator of its reliability and relevance.