This research analyses the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Brazilian expectation tourism. A questionnaire survey was used to assess the tourist expectation regarding safety in future travel. A total of 796 questionnaires were collected between 6 April and 6 May 2020. The data were analyzed with factorial analyzes and t-tests and revealed that the gender of respondents turns out to be an important variable in determining different expectations in future travels. The results show that there are new concerns from Brazilian tourists about safety at the destination, increasing interest in information about the health system and the endemic diseases of the region to which they intend to travel.
Top1. Introduction
World tourism activity in the year 2020 was affected, just like all major industries, due to the restrictions on mobility as a result of a pandemic (Gössling, Scott & Hall, 2020). Concretely, world tourism is expected to shrink a number within the 60% to 80% in that year (Urraco, 2020). Additionally, according to the highest tourism-related body, the hard blow suffered could mean the disappearance of millions of jobs in one of the sectors of the economy that employs the most of the labor force. In Brazil, the sector accounts for a lost around $25 billion dollars and about 400 thousand layoffs, it is possible to reach 700 thousand jobs this year (CNC, 2020). Also, according to CNC, the sector is important not only for the direct expenditure made by tourists, but it is also important for all the subsectors where individual investment in travel can reach such as transportation, shopping for handicrafts, accommodation, restaurants and bars.
While analyzing the evolution of tourism in this country, it is found that in the latest (most recent) study by the Consumer Survey—Travel Intention, which portrays the expectation of Brazilian families to consume tourism-related services in the next six months. FGV (2017) identified that 82.8% of Brazilians intend to travel domestically in the next months and 16.3% prefer the international destinations. Likewise, in the year before the Covid-19 pandemic, Brazilians traveled mostly within the country (96.1%) and for leisure reasons (86.5%), staying overnight between 2 and 5 nights (Hosteltur, 2020). However, this data certainly do not match the results expected for 2020, due to the environment developed since the beginning of the year.
Tourism is a social economic activity, which suffer influences from many different factors. Thus, many stakeholders are responsible for the tourism development of a specific place: local community, businesspersons, public and academic authorities. In this sense, knowing that in the process of choosing the destination of their next trip, potential tourists consider several aspects that would define the image of the destination, it is essential to know these factors and to work together to seek the real development for the place. Likewise, tourism was one of the most affected activities by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis (Couto et al., 2020). In that study Couto et al (2020), the authors investigated the impacts of COVID-19 crisis over the tourism expectations of the Azores Archipelago residents. They considered the health and safety of tourism.
Besides the tourist infrastructures such as restaurants, bars, museums, hotels… (Echtner & Ritchie, 1991; Baloglu & Mccleary, 1999; Chen & Uysal, 2002), there are number of factors that are understood to have gained special attention due to the atypical and unimaginable situation like the one which occurred with the worldwide pandemic. We are specially talking about safety and hospitality. Several authors (Fakeye & Crompton, 1991; Beerli & Martín, 2004) understand that these two aspects are relevant for potential tourists in their decision-making process regarding the destination where to travel. Videlicet, to feel safe and hospitality (understood as the interpersonal relationships between the local community and the visitor) are essential issues that many tourists assess before making their decision (George, 2003). Both are factors that are analyzed by consumers in the election of the next trip (Soares, 2015). Not only that, there were few studies that analyzed the attitudes and intentions of travel of tourists (Abraham et al., 2020).