According to United Nations, World Tourism Organization COVID-19 has had the most devastating impact on the entire global tourism value chain, which resulted in a 74% decline in international passenger arrival, a US$1.3 trillion loss in international tourism receipts, over the US $ 2trillion loss of global domestic product and placing between 100 and 120 million jobs at risk globally. While the initial impact of the pandemic was uniform across the world, the recovery was expected to be varied across the region due to inequitable access to the COVID-19 vaccine. This study seeks to examine the implications of vaccination inequity on tourism recovery in the global tourism market. The study uses secondary, archival data and harnesses the advantages of big data generated from online activities from tourists and tourism companies obtained from authoritative sources. The study found that inequitable access to vaccinations produced a skewed recovery favouring vaccinated regions concentrated in the developed world, leaving poor regions such as Africa behind. The robot system characterising the vaccine-induced recovery had also created a vaccine diplomatic nightmare that scuttled global tourism recovery efforts. To ensure sustainable recovery, there is a need to ensure global vaccination access by rechannelling some of the excess vaccines in developed countries to countries that needs them to ensure the opening up of the entire tourism global market and reduce vulnerabilities that are coming from COVID-19 variants, which poses a threat to the gains made from the current vaccination program. The study concludes that there will not be any meaningful economic recovery without a wholesale approach covering the entire global population.
Keywords: COVID-19; Economic recovery; Tourism recovery; Tourism sustainability; Vaccine apartheid.
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