BEIJING, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- The international tourism industry was battered by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, witnessing a sharp decrease of 73 percent in the number of international tourists worldwide, according to the World Conference on Tourism Cooperation and Development held on Friday in Beijing.
The pandemic had a huge impact on the development of global tourism last year, with tourism investment decreasing by 29.3 percent year on year, said Du Yili with the World Tourism Cities Federation, adding that the revenue of global tourism-related accommodation and catering shrank by 46.3 percent and 28.2 percent, respectively.
Hu Heping, minister of culture and tourism, said at the conference that the number of domestic tourists in China recovered in the first half of 2021, totaling 1.87 billion, more than 60 percent of that in the same period of 2019.
The conference also noticed that online tourism bucked the trend and enjoyed growth in 2020, suggesting that the digital transformation is a basic dynamic for the recovery and development of global tourism. Enditem
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