Let's talk about the problems facing the tourism sector internationally, as well as locally here in Magdalena.
As remarked by an article of the International Monetary Fund -IMF-, tourism-dependent economies are among those harmed the most by the pandemic.
Before COVID-19, tourism had become one of the most important sectors in the world economy, accounting for 10 percent of global GDP and more than 320 million jobs worldwide.
According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) the worldwide pandemic has put 100 million jobs at risk, many of which are in micro, small, and medium-sized firms, which employ 54 percent of the tourism sector.
Incomes in Tourism are not likely to recover to pre-crisis levels until 2023, as per a current IMF study on tourism in a post-pandemic world.
Meanwhile, in Magdalena, as a result of the "new normality" imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, cities and tourist areas have been pushed to reconsider and adjust their services to get higher commercial benefits while posing fewer health risks and negative impact on the territory.
As stated in an article in a local newspaper, El Informador, for local tourism to reach the necessary level of competitiveness in the national and international markets, planning is required.
Besides the planning issues in the Magdalena department, other problems that affect the flow of tourists are the sporadic power outages, mobility problems on the roads (as in Santa Marta), along with the wave of crime to which foreigners are exposed causes a bad impression at the local level in our country.
Hence, the importance of the local tourism sector playing a leadership role in the structuring of an effective policy that leads to turning the Magdalena department into an attractive destination. This was a wide and general panorama about the relevance of tourism, so, creating proper and well designed projects aimed to reinforce this economic sector is vital.
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