WTO says international tourism continues to decline

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International tourist arrivals have dropped off by nearly eight per cent globally this year as tourism around the world continues to decline due to economic conditions, according to a new report by the World Tourism Organization (WTO).

“We are still living in a situation where the depth and the length of this economic challenge is not clear yet,” said the acting secretary-general of the organization, Taleb Rifai.

According to the tourism organization, 117 million tourist arrivals were reported for the months of January and February, which was a decline of 7.7 percent as compared with the same months last year. The drop in arrivals for the first two months of 2009 follows a two percent decrease in arrival numbers for the second half of last year.

The WTO indicated that Europe was the region most affected, seeing a fall of 8.4 percent in arrivals, and that North America experienced a drop of 3.4 percent.

In comments to reporters in Madrid, where the WTO has its headquarters, Rifai said that it was not possible to know what effect the swine flu outbreak would have on tourism as the outbreak began just a few weeks ago.

He added, however, that past health threats, such as the outbreak of SARS in 2002, have shown that tourism can recover quite rapidly once the threat is under control.

Rifai went on to say that the WTO is expecting international tourism to decline by as much as two percent in 2009.

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