Sustainable Tourism and the COVID-19 Crisis

Introduction

Tourism, which has a dynamic structure, is a strong industry that adapts rapidly to the changes that occur as a result of globalization and technological developments and provides great contributions to the economy of countries such as employment opportunities, productivity increase and foreign exchange inflow. The tourism sector, along with petrochemistry and automotive, is among the three sectors that generate the highest income in the world economy (Bezirgan & Bezirgan, 2021: 1). Therefore, the tourism industry is an important competitive tool that should be considered in terms of sustainable development.

The understanding of the global village consisting of a single and large world market, which gained momentum with the liberalization in world markets, has increased the interdependence of countries. Therefore, political instability, terrorist incidents, epidemics or climate crises that occur in any region as a result of intense industrialization cause a crisis in the whole world economy. The crisis, which we can describe as a loss of order resulting from any reason, can uncontrollably change all the balances in the regions under its influence. Therefore, it has devastating effects on the tourism industry, which is open to environmental changes, has a complex and fragile economic structure. The tourism industry has to implement emergency plans in order not to disturb the balance in every crisis period with a massive impact.

In addition to the epidemics caused by the SARS, MERS, EBOLA viruses that emerged in previous years, the negative effects caused by the COVID-19 epidemic, which started to show its effect in late December 2019, affected the whole world. In this period of economic crisis and uncertainty, both health and marketing-oriented measures to be applied in terms of tourism businesses are very important for the continuity of the sector and to overcome the crisis with the least damage. Although the crisis has devastating effects, it can be overcome by turning threats into opportunities as a result of a professional management approach and the implementation of effective strategies (Çeti & Ünlüönen, 2019:110).

In times of crisis, marketing strategies should be redefined according to consumer expectations and emergency measures. When tourism businesses make the necessary arrangements in their marketing components with the awareness of the emergency, they can overcome the crisis period harmlessly and even increase their profitability levels. Achieving this success depends on the careful examination of consumer behavior during the crisis (Köylüoğlu et al., 2020), the realistic determination of external environmental conditions, and the effective implementation of emergency plans.

The biggest threat faced by tourism enterprises during economic crisis periods is that the income obtained from the activities of the enterprise is lower than the total costs, which are compulsory expenses for creating touristic products (Erol, 2008: 153). When it comes to reducing costs, the first limitation that comes to mind is to reduce the marketing and advertising budgets that damage the corporate image. the other hand, in order to combat the crisis, it is a more rational alternative to develop alternative tourism types with fixed customer potential such as sports tourism, accessible tourism, green tourism, thermal tourism, cultural tourism and congress tourism and protect their tourism potential.

The crisis, which started in late December 2019 due to the COVID-19 epidemic and affected the whole world, has put the tourism industry in a great impasse due to local and international travel restrictions, curfews, the cessation of the activities of food and beverage (Aydın & Doğan, 2020).