Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046

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Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights

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Tourism, job vulnerability and income inequality during the COVID-19

pandemic: A global perspective
Ya-Yen Sun a, *, Mengyu Li b, Manfred Lenzen c, Arunima Malik d, Francesco Pomponi e
a
Business School, The University of Queensland, Room 448, Building 39A (GPN3), St Lucia Campus, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
b
Post-doc research fellow, Integrated Sustainability Analysis, School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
c
Integrated Sustainability Analysis, School of Physics, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
d
Integrated Sustainability Analysis, School of Physics, Discipline of Accounting, School of Business, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
e
Resource Efficient Built Environment Lab, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Editor: Li Gang The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the vulnerability of tourism workers, but no detailed job loss figures are
available that links tourism vulnerability with income inequality. This study evaluates how reduced international
Keywords: tourism consumption affects tourism employment and their income loss potential for 132 countries. This analysis
COVID-19 shows that higher proportions of female (9.6%) and youth (10.1%) experienced unemployment whilst they were
Tourism workers
paid significantly less because they worked in tourism (− 5%) and if they were women (− 23%). Variations in
Employment vulnerability
policy support and pre-existing economic condition further created significant disparities on lost-income sub­
Inequality
Women sidies across countries. With the unequal financial burden across groups, income and regions, the collapse of
Youth international travel exacerbates short-term income inequality within and between countries.

1. Introduction Before the pandemic, tourism development was leveraged to create

“Just as the tourism sector is affected more than others by the current
COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable groups within the sector are among the
hardest hit.”
United Nations World Tourism Organization (2020)
Throughout the global economy, travel and tourism were among the
most-affected sectors in the COVID-pandemic (Lenzen et al., 2020). Even
two years after its first outbreak in March 2020, new virus variants and
several waves of infection outbreaks have led to a slow progress in
border re-openings and low consumer confidence in travel. In 2020 and
2021, international tourism flow was reduced by 74% and 72%
respectively, resulting in a staggering loss of US$3.8–4.7 trillion export
revenue per year (UNWTO, 2022; WTTC, 2020). The impact on the
tourism sector is unprecedented as the economic losses are eight times
larger than the impact during the 2008 financial crisis (UNWTO,
2020b).
On top of this substantial economic loss in the tourism industry,
COVID-19 generates a profound impact on our society, namely the
exacerbation of poverty and inequality within and between countries.
substantial benefits for the macro-level economy, including increasing
foreign receipts, boosting service exports, and playing a significant role
in the tourism-led growth of the domestic economy (Brida, Cortes-
Jimenez, & Pulina, 2016). Most importantly, tourism is labour inten­
sive, hence provides many jobs for skilled and unskilled labour as well as
for other cohorts who have difficulty in finding employment. Among
these 330 million positions that are linked to tourism directly and
indirectly, 54% are offered to women (UNWTO, 2019), 10–34% are
available to youth (WTTC, 2019), and many are undertaken by low-
income families. By supporting these economically vulnerable groups
with fair wages and decent jobs, tourism plays a significant role in
reducing income inequality and absolute poverty ($1.90 a day), espe­
cially for developing and less developed countries (Li, Chen, Li, & Goh,
2016; Llorca-Rodríguez, García-Fernández, & Casas-Jurado, 2020;
Medina-Muñoz, Medina-Muñoz, & Gutiérrez-Pérez, 2015; Nguyen,
Schinckus, Su, & Chong, 2020). With the collapse of tourism demand
during the COVID-19 period, the traditional opportunities provided to
economically vulnerable groups are substantially diminishing. This
likely leads to a vicious cycle of economic despair, inequality, and social
unrest, as evidenced in the aftereffects experienced in SARS 2003, H1N1

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: y.sun@business.uq.edu.au (Y.-Y. Sun), meli0258@uni.sydney.edu.au (M. Li), manfred.lenzen@sydney.edu.au (M. Lenzen), arunima.malik@
sydney.edu.au (A. Malik), F.Pomponi@napier.ac.uk (F. Pomponi).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annale.2022.100046
Received 22 February 2022; Received in revised form 25 March 2022; Accepted 4 April 2022
Available online 8 April 2022
2666-9579/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
Y.-Y. Sun et al.
2009, MERS 2012, Ebola 2014, and Zika 2016 (Sedik & Xu, 2020).
Prior work on tourism-related employment losses due to COVID-19
always reported an aggregated figure. In 2020, the World Travel and
Tourism Council (2020) foresaw 174.4 million job losses among tourism
sectors, their suppliers, and employee-supported economic transactions
at the global level. Further, the OECD (2020) estimated that 6.6–11.7
million tourism workers are at risk in the European region. For indi­
vidual countries, a reduction in tourism led to 3.3%–3.6% job losses in
Australia (Pham, Dwyer, Su, & Ngo, 2021), 1.7–2.7 million jobless in
Japan (Kitamura, Karkour, Ichisugi, & Itsubo, 2020) and 2.1%–6.4%
losses of employment in Greece (Mariolis, Rodousakis, & Soklis, 2020),
or 24% reduction of tourism jobs in Tanzania (Henseler, Maisonnave, &
Maskaeva, 2022). All international agencies, including the United Na­
tions World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the World Travel and
Tourism Council (WTTC), and the International Labour Organization
(ILO) however have indicated that this pandemic has generated asym­
metrical influences on the working population with women, youth, and
the low-income group being mostly affected. Yet, no detailed job losses
figures are available to profile the extent of impacts on those vulnerable
groups in this unprecedented tourism crisis, which is unfolding at a
global scale with a prolonged period of more than two years. The need to
have a robust, comparable and detailed job risk assessment is crucial as
this information advises the economic vulnerability of the various
groups, regions, and sectors, and most importantly, it informs the likely
income and social inequality within and between countries.
The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive job risk assess­
ment for tourism-related employment during the COVID-19 pandemic at
the global scale and provide evidence to link international tourism and
income inequality during the pandemic. Our study firstly identifies how
reduced international tourism consumption affects tourism employment
by gender, age and income status in 132 countries and regions. Sec­
ondly, we adopt employment vulnerability to estimate tourism income loss
potential against both a country's economic status and the extent of their
policy and social support. Tourism workers are expected to face high
employment vulnerability if their countries already experience (1) a
higher unemployment rate and income inequality and (2) weak sub­
sidiary policies and social support. These factors are directly associated
with the difficulty of finding a new position and present a significant risk
of reduced incomes and increased demand for social welfare. Combining
the information of tourism jobs losses, the local economic situation, and
region-specific COVID policy support, we then identify the most
marginalized and vulnerable communities that have been heavily
impacted by the tourism decline during the pandemic. Results confirm
the economic polarization within and between countries and provide us
with an important foundation to formulate how international tourism
may drive inequality during the pandemic. This also informs how an
effective tourism recovery can better foster a socially inclusive status in
the post-COVID pandemic period.
2. Employment vulnerability in the COVID-19 period
The COVID-19 pandemic has created the worst recession since the
Great Depression (United Nations, 2021). Each affected job in the
context of the COVID-19 pandemic represents a vulnerable worker who
is subject to a deterioration of their working status either via unem­
ployment, reduction of working hours, reduction of wages, or unpaid
leave. The financial burden, however, is not equally felt across society.
In this study, we used employment vulnerability, defined as “how hard it is
for individuals to manage the risks or cope with the losses and costs
associated with the occurrence of risky events or situations” (Bocquier,
Nordman, & Vescovo, 2010, p. 1297) to proxy financial burden. In the
face of any crisis, employment vulnerability is determined by unem­
ployment and wage loss potential as well as an employee's ease of re-
employment (Bazillier, Boboc, & Calavrezo, 2016). For the COVID-19
event, employment vulnerability is deemed high if a worker is subject
to a higher likelihood of job loss, not able to find a new position once
2
Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046
unemployed, or has limited access to wage subsidies and any form of
income support.
Among the cohort of tourism workers, women, youth and low-
income workers are more likely to endure high employment vulnera­
bility when tourism is in a crisis. This also holds true for the COVID-19
pandemic as these groups tend to be subject to more economic hard­
ships, with higher unemployment rates and higher income losses
(Arbulú, Razumova, Rey-Maquieira, & Sastre, 2021; ILO, 2020, 2021a;
Sun, Sie, Faturay, Auwalin, & Wang, 2021). Three fundamental char­
acteristics can be used to describe their vulnerability to high-risk job
contexts: exposure, risk, and coping capacity (Fig. 1).
The exposure factor refers to the essential job requirement in tourism
to provide face-to-face contact with customers. Front-line tourism em­
ployees, who tend to comprise a higher ratio of women and youth, face
both job and health risks. Their services cannot be remotely offered via
telework, while at the same time, they are being exposed to higher
health risks due to direct people contacts (Belzunegui-Eraso & Erro-
Garcés, 2020). In the United Kingdom, people working in leisure sectors
were found to have 2 to 3 times higher rates of COVID-related death than
those of the same age in the population (Office for National Statistics,
2020). Without proper protection and health measures, people in
frontline tourism positions are not only more prone to COVID infections
and related deaths, but they also bear higher lost income and medical
expenses during hospitalization and quarantine.
The second factor contributing to tourism employment vulnerability
is job insecurity (see ‘RISK’, Fig. 1). Women and youth are employed in
more tourism jobs that feature low wages, a lack of formal contracts,
micro and small businesses, and self-employment or entrepreneurship
(Kartseva & Kuznetsova, 2020). Globally, approximately 30% of the
tourism workforce is hired by businesses with 2–9 employees (ILO,
2020). When tourism demand is low, a lack of legal protection and
support from labour unions renders them more likely to be laid off,
compared to the same cohort working in other sectors. Unstable remu­
neration combined with no written working contract, which is
frequently seen among many causal tourism positions, especially reflects
a worker's job insecurity. This is also the leading cause of poverty (World
Bank, 2001).
Whilst many female and youth tourism employees are more likely to
experience layoffs, their coping capacities to locate a new position are
relatively low in the pandemic. Due to COVID-related restrictions and
social distancing, workers who are able to engage with telework are less
economically impacted (Belzunegui-Eraso & Erro-Garcés, 2020). How­
ever, to work comfortably with technology requires workers having
access to hardware and software resources which may necessitate self-
finance in those situations where employers do not provide the
required resources. These opportunities of working from home are dis­
proportionally enjoyed by male, older, highly educated, and highly paid
employees (Blundell, Dias, Joyce, & Xu, 2020; Bonacini, Gallo, & Scic­
chitano, 2020). This directly relates to the inequalities present in our
society with respect to access to education and training on technology.
The low-education, low-skilled nature of most tourism jobs makes it
more difficult to locate new “teleworkable” positions, and therefore
workers in these situations become more economically vulnerable
(Shibata, 2020).
Besides demographic and position-related factors, employment
vulnerability of individuals is simultaneously influenced by local eco­
nomic structures and policy support with respect to the COVID-19
pandemic (see ‘COPING’, Fig. 1). Destinations that rely substantially
on tourism receipts, have a simplified economic structure and face a
higher unemployment rate are likely to expose tourism workers to a
higher economic vulnerability (Navarro-Drazich & Lorenzo, 2021;
OECD, 2020). The fact that most tourism workers possess similar and
basic skill sets makes intra-group job searching competitive, especially
when there is only a limited number of new positions available. The
competition will be fierce if the local population is confronted with an
existing high unemployment rate and a substantial income inequality.
 Y.-Y. Sun et al. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046

Tourism Employment Vulnerability

EXPOSURE RISK COPING

related to the tourism’s
face-to-face working
nature, which subjects
workers to higher health
risks.
associated with tourism through capability to find
jobs arising from new employment or
characteristics of having being supported by
no formal contract, income transfer from
receiving low wages, policy support.
being self-employed or
constituting a micro or
small business.

Fig. 1. Factors that determine tourism employment vulnerability in COVID.

While the economic outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic is detri­
mental, policy support helps to buffer economic hardships and accel­
erate the bounce-back effect. Lessons from prior pandemics [1968 Flu,
SARS (2003), H1N1 (2009), MERS (2012), Ebola (2014), and Zika
(2016)] showed that reductions in GDP and employment were less se­
vere for countries with larger first-year responses in government
spending (Ma, Rogers, & Zhou, 2020). Social protection programs such
as income transfer, improving food security, and supporting employ­
ability, provide a short-term compensation for the loss of labour and
non-labour income; wage subsidies, tax exemptions, or active labour
market programmes also help firms and workers to keep jobs. In the
longer term, the instrument of equalizing income distribution serves to
cultivate human capital formation, in which governments invest in ed­
ucation programs to enhance and diversify the skill sets of the work­
force. While many countries widely implement these policy supports,
the larger governments are found to be more effective in facilitating the
disaster recovery due to their existing social safety nets, generous cash
subsidies, and extensive work-related training opportunities (Das, Bisai,
& Ghosh, 2021; Jurzyk et al., 2020; Ma et al., 2020).
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 100
countries have provided some form of subsidies to small and medium
enterprises (SMEs) and self-employed workers in the tourism sector
(UNWTO, 2020a). Measures that are directly related to tourism jobs and
skills are widely available in Europe (80% of total countries in this re­
gion), followed by Asia and the Pacific (60%), Middle East (57%), Africa
(51%) and the Americas (28%). This indicates some level of disparity in
tourism policy support across regions. As history has shown, the weak
institutions among many small and developing countries tend to offer
minimum income compensation for tourism workers, and are more
likely to render them more economically disadvantaged during the crisis
than those from the richer countries.
Tourism employment vulnerability is likely to vary by gender, age,
earnings, and region, but the detailed job impacts of the pandemic are
yet to be quantified. In this study, we provide global evidence of the
extent of job losses and employment vulnerability across countries. We
dissect the social impacts of an unprecedented tourism crisis, allowing
us to understand who are most economically vulnerable, which sectors
endure most job losses, and which countries experience the most un­
equal economic losses among tourism workers. This is vital information
for understanding the complex relationship of how the COVID-pandemic
has influenced tourism and income inequality.
3. Method
Tourism is not a standard sector based on an industry classification
system, but rather, encompasses a diversified array of businesses. As a
result, tourism employment not only refers to a proportion of employees
in the hospitality sector, but it also comprises those who are in the
transport, retail and recreational activities that provide a direct service
to tourists. Analysing the COVID-19 impact on tourism employment
requires a systematic approach that links an economy's labour profile
with tourism consumption. In this study, we use three steps to map
tourism expenditure reductions to the labour markets, disaggregated by
sector, gender, age and income level. These procedures are consistent
with the Tourism Satellite Account framework that links tourism de­
mand and tourism supply in the economy (United Nations, 2010).
Essentially, these steps estimate the ratio of tourism receipt losses to the
sectoral sales and assume that a direct proportion of employees in these
sectors may face unemployment as the immediate consequence of a
significant and rapidly reduced demand.
The first step is to estimate how the individual sector was impacted
by the collapse of international travel in 2020. Total reduced interna­
tional tourism receipts in 2020 were obtained from the UNWTO (2022),
providing an aggregate magnitude of how the local economy was
affected by international travel regulations. This aggregated tourism loss
was then allocated to four characteristic tourism sectors: transport,
lodging and restaurant, retailing, and recreational service. The alloca­
tion was based on the ratios that were reported in the country's tourism
satellite account or the expenditure pattern that was reported to the
UNWTO for 132 countries (Lenzen et al., 2018).1
Both tourists and non-tourists contribute to sales in these four
tourism-related sectors. It is likely that businesses supported mainly by
tourists will be subject to a higher operating difficulty and introduce
more lay-offs. However, no information is available to systematically
measure how rapidly and to what extent businesses reduce their staff
when demand drops. Prior studies indicated that the employment elas­
ticity with respect to visitor expenditure varied and can range from
elastic (1.53) (Thapa-Parajuli & Paudel, 2018) to inelastic (0.103)(Sun
& Wong, 2010). Here, we assume that the proportion of unemployed
workforce is equal to the level of the business sales losses (elasticity = 1).
For example, if the international tourism collapse results in 15% sales
losses for the transport sector in country A, 15% of the total workers in
transport of country A are then assumed to face lay-offs and suffer in­
come losses. The sales loss ratio (Ri) is the comparison between tourism
lost receipts (TLi) in 2020 and the sectoral sales (Si) in 2019.2
We calculate the sales loss ratio for each of the four tourism depen
1
The UNWTO reported tourism receipt loss for 185 countries. However, the
unavailability of tourism satellite accounts or the expenditure of some countries
prevents the aggregated receipt loss to be allocated to four sectors.
2
Under the framework of Tourism Satellite Account (United Nations, 2010),
tourism employment is in a direct ratio to tourism sales. This means if the sales
are reduced by 10%, employment will decrease by 10%. This assumption may
not reflect the way business operates (Sun & Wong, 2010); however, it provides
an approximation on how the labour market is adjusted based on external de­
mand shock.

3
­
Y.-Y. Sun et al.
dent sectors (United Nations, 2010): transport, lodging and restaurant,
retailing, and recreational services, and then estimate their respective
unemployed staff to derive the total job losses due to international
tourism (Eq. (1)).
∑
4 ∑
4
Qtourism = Qi *Ri = Qi *
TLi
(1)
i=1 i=1
Si
where Qtourism represents total tourism worker reduction; Qi is the total
number of workers in sectors i = 1, …, 4 (transport, lodging and
restaurant, retailing and recreational service); Ri refers to the sales loss
ratio due to the reduction of international travel for four sectors; TLi
stands for tourism receipt losses in 2020, and Si represents the total sales
of the sector in 2019.
The last step maps the employment reduction of tourism workers by
demographic variables based on the International Labor Organization
labour profiles. The International Labor Organization (2021b) provides
the most comprehensive and complete labour data for all persons in paid
employment or self-employment based on a consistent industry classi­
fication system. This helps to systematically track the workforce across
four tourism dependent sectors without narrowly focusing only on
hospitality. The International Labour Organization provides labour data
by gender, age, and the monthly salary, allowing us to calculate the
female workers' participation rate, the youth worker (age 15–24)
participation rate, the sectoral pay difference between tourism and non-
tourism workers, and the gender pay gap in tourism.
A harsh job market and substantial income polarization present
additional challenges for the jobless to locate new positions. To reflect
these economic conditions, the unemployment rate in 2020 (ILO,
2021b) and the income inequality Gini index (World Bank, 2021) were
sourced. In terms of resilience, policy can mitigate employment
vulnerability via income support measures. Income support data from
the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) is
adopted to proxy the level of financial support to the affected tourism
worker (Hale et al., 2021). The system records the number of days and
the extent that the income-support support is provided to people who
lose their jobs or cannot work. This gives an indication on how extensive
and supportive the subsidies are to the unemployed. The UNDP Human
Development Index (HDI) provides information of the local education
system and the number of years of schooling (UNDP, 2020). This is used
to proxy people's coping capacities to be re-trained and re-hired in a new
position.
4. Results
4.1. Global tourism job losses
Total inbound tourism loss across 132 countries was US$ 1.58 trillion
in 2020 (UNWTO, 2022), corresponding to 1.38% of global production
losses. Our estimation indicates this loss places 24 million direct tourism
jobs at risk. The sectoral breakdown indicates that 9.5 million position
losses (40%) are in the retailing and wholesale trade, followed by 8.8
million employment losses (37%) in accommodation and restaurants,
4.5 million (19%) in transport, and 1.1 million (5%) in personal services.
In terms of destination ranking, China bears the highest employment
loss potential (4.5 million FTE), followed by Thailand (2.3 million),
Indonesia (1.7 million), Vietnam (1.2 million) and India (1.0 million)
(part a in Fig. 2 and Table 1). Jobs losses at the individual country level
reflect not only total tourism revenue that was forgone during the
pandemic but also the inherent differences in labour intensity across
countries. Due to different uptakes of technology and labour cost, the
labour intensity per unit service varies. Indonesia and Vietnam, for
example, support four times more workers per million US dollar sales
than those in China, in the hospitality sector. The labour-intensive na­
ture of specific countries and the significant size of their inbound
tourism market expose a larger number of tourism workers to economic
4
Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046
risks.
In contrast, the highest job reduction ratio is found among small is­
land and developing countries with a relatively simplified economy and
that rely heavily on international tourism. The tourism job loss ratio of
these tourism-related sectors goes as high as 86% for Maldives, 43% for
Montenegro, and 37% for Fiji, Cambodia and Croatia, (part B in Fig. 2
and Table 1). In other words, one in every three tourism workers are
likely to be laid off in these hotspots.
Referencing countries with a detailed job profile allows the
employment losses to be further assessed by gender, age and monthly
salary (n = 105). Considering international travel losses, 9.6% of total
female workers were likely to be unemployed in four tourism sectors3; in
contrast, the job reduction rate for male workers was 8.9%. Job reduc­
tion was also higher for youth (age 15–24) (10.1%) while their coun­
terpart cohorts, young adults (age 25–30) and adults (age 30+),
experienced 9.6% and 9.3% job losses, respectively.4
The composition of tourism workers before COVID provides a good
basis for predicting the likely job losses pattern. Both developed and
developing countries have a high female participation rate and youth
participation rate in tourism. In particular, sixteen countries have a fe­
male employment ratio in tourism at least 10% higher than the
economy-wide average (Togo 76%, Latvia 65%, Ghana 63%, Bolivia
62%, and Estonia 58%), demonstrating strong female-supported tourism
businesses. Similarly, the dominance of youth employment before
COVID is prevailing in some of the richest and poorest destinations in
the world, such as the Netherlands (38% of the workforce across four
tourism-related sectors), Denmark (34%), and Vanuatu (32%), Angola
(31%) and Ethiopia (30%). This supports the notion that both developed
and developing countries are all likely to lose significant female and
youth tourism jobs in the COVID pandemic.5
On top of the financial burden on women and youth workers, people
in the tourism sectors tend to work at the lower end of the pay scale.
Across 90 destinations, 69 countries (77%) offer a lower pay, having a
9% difference in tourism salary compared to the national average. The
biggest wage difference between tourism and non-tourism workers is
reported in Haiti (− 42%), Angola (− 30%), Togo (− 30%), Austria
(− 23%) and Ireland (− 18%) (part c in Fig. 2). For the other 21 countries,
there is a silver lining, as tourism's salary is 7% higher than the econo­
my's average (Lao 32%; Ghana 22%; Egypt 21%, Kyrgyzstan 10% and
Madagascar 9%). However, the low pay issue persists. Globally tourism
workers are paid 5% below the national average salary.
A significant gender pay inequality among global tourism workers
further exacerbates the job precarity. Female tourism workers on
average earned 23% less than their male tourism colleagues, and 11%
lower than other female employees in non-tourism sectors (part d in
Fig. 2 and Table 1). In contrast, tourism sectors were able to offer male
workers a similar salary (1% less) to those employed by other sectors.
Some of the largest tourism gender pay gaps are observed in the poorest
regions, such as Ghana (men earned 69% more than women), Togo
(60%), Mali (58%), and developed countries, including United Kingdom
(39%) and Austria (38%). Clearly, the economic status of a country does
not determine or correlate with the tourism gender pay gap (p-value of
3
Reducing inbound tourism was found to place more male tourism workers
(14.3 million) at risk than females (6.2 million). This in part reflects that global
employment is predominantly experienced by men (61%), especially in the
transport sector. The associated income losses for male and female tourism
workers are US $4.8 billion and US$2.8 billion, respectively.
4
The age breakdown on job losses also revealed that adult workers endure
most of the job losses (9.2 million FTE, age 30+), followed by youth workers
(2.00 million FTE, age 15–24), and young adult workers (1.73 million FTE, age
24–30).
5
The Pearson correlation between female participation rate in tourism and
GDP per capita is insignificant (p value = 0.966). This same result is observed
for the youth participation in tourism and GDP (p value = 0.114).
Y.-Y. Sun et al. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046

(a) Tourism job losses ('000) in 2020

(b) Job reduction in four tourism sectors (%)

(c) Sectoral pay gap between tourism and the national average (%)

(d) Tourism gender pay gap (%)

Fig. 2. Tourism employment losses, job losses ratio, sectoral pay gap and gender pay gap.

the Pearson correlation = 0.796). This differs from the global pattern in multiple factors, including differences between average hourly earnings
which middle-income countries tend to have the smallest gender pay of men and women, total hours worked and whether they are full-time or
gap when all sectors are considered (Olivetti & Petrongolo, 2008). It is part-time. While the gender pay gap is an indication of inequality of
important to acknowledge that the gender pay gap can be a result of economic earnings, it may not ascertain discrimination.

5
Y.-Y. Sun et al. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046

4.2. Inter-country vulnerability

Note. 1The negative value indicates that the average salary across four tourism sectors is lower than the national average salary. 2The negative value indicates that the average salary of female tourism workers is lower than
Pay difference between female tourism workers We compare inter-country variability in the profile of tourism
and female non-tourism workers3
workers, macro-level economic performance, policy support, and
70% tourism economic shock during the COVID pandemic across four income
63%
49%
39%
25%
25%
24%
24%
22%
20%

− 12%
categories: high income, upper middle income, lower middle income
and low income. As indicated earlier, destinations tend to have a similar
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
tourism job profile with more positions offered to women and youth and
pay differently by gender. Destinations however face significant
disparity in tourism demand shock, pre-existing local economic condi­
tions and COVID-related policy support by economic status (see ANOVA
results in Table 2). These factors moderate employment vulnerability at
Comoros
Namibia

Ethiopia
Rwanda
Uganda

Austria
Angola

the destination level and reveal the most vulnerable communities that
Nepal
Togo

Mali

have been heavily impacted by the tourism decline during the pandemic.
Across four income categories, we found that destinations in the

that of the male tourism workers. 3The negative value indicates that the average salary of female tourism workers is lower than that of the female non-tourism workers.
upper-middle income category suffer the largest employment shock with
Pay difference between male and

an average of 15% reduction in the tourism workforce (Table 2). These

female tourism workers2

include some very important tourism-dependent small island econo­

69%
60%
58%
50%
50%
50%
44%
42%
41%
41%

− 23%

mies, for example, Maldives, Montenegro, Fiji, and St Lucia. Around one
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−

in every six workers across four tourism sectors is likely to suffer job
losses in 2020 due to the collapse of international travel—twice the
impact at other destinations. In addition, these countries face a pre-
existing high unemployment rate (10%) and experience the most un­
Burkina Faso
Cameroon

equal income distribution to household (proxied through the GINI

Tanzania
Namibia
Vanuatu
Ethiopia
Uganda
Ghana

index). These factors compound the difficulty for the existing unem­
Togo
Mali

ployed tourism workers to make up their lost income with a good-

quality new position. Even though their governments have provided
Pay difference between tourism and

income support to people who have lost work, these measures are esti­
mated to be half of those that are available in high-income countries in
the national average1

terms of the amount of subsides provided and the length of time the
42%
30%
30%
23%
18%
18%
18%
16%
15%
14%

− 5%

measures last (Hale et al., 2021). These factors are likely to cause
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−
−

tourism workers in upper-middle-income destinations to suffer the

biggest income losses compared to the same cohorts at other
destinations.
For disadvantaged groups, female tourism workers in low-income
Namibia

Slovakia
Jamaica
Albania
Austria
Ireland
Angola
Countries that were mostly impacted by the inbound tourism losses and their job characteristics, 2020

Nepal

countries are expected to face the biggest income loss potential. In

Togo
Haiti

countries such as Togo, Ethiopia and Gambia, tourism is a major job

provider for many women, recording at least a 10% higher female
Youth unemployment rate across

participation rate than other sectors, but at the same time, providing a
substantially lower wage due to sectoral-pay differences (− 10%) and
84%
46%
43%
41%
40%
38%
37%
36%
29%
28%

10%
four tourism sectors

gender pay gap (− 26%) (Table 2). This alludes to potential entry bar­
riers for women to be employed in other sectors due to skill and op­
portunity shortage, which will likely result in difficulty for them to
replace their income with a new position. It is also of no surprise that
only very small social assistance is being made available. Globally, the
Montenegro

Cambodia
Maldives

Vanuatu

social assistance (mainly cash transfer) ranges from $525 per capita in
Georgia

Albania
Croatia

Iceland
Cyprus

high income countries to $6 in low income countries with an average

Fiji

duration of 3.3 months during the pandemic (Gentilini, Almenfi, Orton,

& Dale, 2020). The unemployment benefit replacement rates are
Female unemployed rate across

therefore expected to be low. The combination of gender pay gap and

weak policy support renders female workers in low-income countries
87%
41%
41%
39%
38%
37%
36%
34%
32%
31%

10%
four tourism sectors

more economically vulnerable than female workers at other

destinations.

5. Discussion
Montenegro
Cambodia
Maldives

Vanuatu
Georgia

Gambia
Croatia

Cyprus

Drawing from the global evidence in the previous section, we iden­

Belize
Fiji

tify three major factors in causing the asymmetrical income losses across
cohorts among the tourism workforce in the pandemic: tourism job
Tourism job losses (000)

characteristics, economic factors and policy support (Fig. 3). These

4487
2299
1703
1232
1016
869
756
705
665
582

factors explain how income has been redistributed within and across
Average across the

countries, providing a basis to predict welfare and social inequality at

United States

the macro level.

Philippines
Cambodia
Indonesia
Viet Nam

sample
Malaysia
Thailand
Table 1

China

Egypt
India

6
Y.-Y. Sun et al. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046

5.1. Intra-country income inequality

providing direct cash payments to people who lose their jobs or cannot work, from May to Dec 2020. The result is recorded in three ways: 0 – no income support; 1 – government is replacing less than 50% of lost salary; 2 –
government is replacing 50% or more of lost salary. The larger number indicates that stronger support is provided. 3 The Human Development Index (HDI) proxies the access to education. It has a range of 0 to 1 where 1
Note: 1The Gini index is a measure of the distribution of income across a population. It has a range of 0 to 1 where a higher Gini index indicates greater inequality. 2 The OxCGRT tracked whether the government is
Tourism youth
job reduction
The demographic composition of workers and their earnings de­

16.5%
9.0%

8.2%
4.6%

0.04
(%)
termines the distribution of a country's income across the workforce,
before and after the pandemic. Destinations that employ dispropor­
tionally more women and youth workers in their tourism businesses are
expected to see more job losses during the pandemics because a higher
Economic shock

job reduction (%)

Tourism female

proportion of these two cohorts work in frontlines, in part-time posi­

15.3% tions, and without the protection of formal contracts. This has been
8.4%

7.7%
5.1%

0.05
confirmed in the Pacific Small Island Developing States (Connell, 2021),
Portugal (Almeida & Santos, 2020), Spain (Arbulú et al., 2021),
Indonesia (Sun et al., 2021) and South Africa (Chipumuro, Mihailescu, &
Rinaldi, 2021). The average salary of these cohorts further determines
reduction (%)
Tourism job

whether they are low-income workers and proxies if they have sufficient
15.0%
8.0%

7.6%
4.2%

0.03

savings to navigate the economic hardship. Therefore, countries that

report a higher proportion of female and youth workers, a lower pay rate
in the tourism sector, and a significant gender pay gap are expected to
experience substantial income reduction for female and youth workers
in the lower earning quantile during the COVID-19 pandemic. This
Development
The Human

presents a context in which a society sees many lower-income tourism

<0.001
Index3

0.87
0.76
0.63
0.49

workers lose earnings while high-income non-tourism workers continue

to work, earn and save. As a result, this will shift the labour earning
Policy support

distribution of a country toward the high-earning quantiles and shrink

the share received by the low-income earners. Subsequently, this widens
the income inequality within a country.
support index2

Overall, three quarters of global destinations experienced a sectoral-

Economic
OxCGRT

<0.001
1.26
0.58
0.50
0.36

pay gap with tourism workers receiving less payment, and almost every
country reporting a significant gender-pay gap with female tourism
workers being mostly disadvantaged. Our analysis shows the distortion
of income distribution through tourism is not just a challenge for the
poor, small or tourism-dependent states but also for some of the most
<0.001
index1
GINI

32.0
42.1
39.2
37.9

developed economies in the world, such as the Netherlands (a high ratio

of youth tourism labour) and the United Kingdom (a significant tourism
Macro economy

gender pay gap). This implies that the rapid collapse of international
Unemployment rate

tourism consistently increases the short-term income inequality between

2020 (%)

men/women, youth/adult, and rich/poor for most destinations globally.

<0.001
10.1%
6.6%

5.8%
6.3%
Tourism job characteristics, economic shock, and macro factors by four economic statuses, 2020.

5.2. Cross-country income inequality

While tourism workers are mostly vulnerable during the pandemic,

Gender pay

the impact of income re-distribution can be moderated by macro-level

gap (%)

18%
20%
19%
26%

0.76

economic factors and policy support. Significant disparities in these

two dimensions however are found across regions. It is of no surprise
−
−
−
−

that high-income countries provide relatively sufficient policy support,

and at the same time, their economy is healthier, more diversified, and
Sectoral pay
gap (%)

− 10%
Tourism job characteristics

well digitalized. In contrast, middle-income and low-income countries

− 7%
− 6%

0.04
0%

struggle with an insufficient social safety net, a higher unemployment

rate or a lack of government spending on mitigating the impacts of the
pandemic. The same countries have also been assailed by high disparity
Youth tourism
workers (%)

in income distribution. This challenge becomes more pronounced given

16%
15%
18%
18%

0.31

that these regions are not supported with a strong domestic tourism
demand and with a higher spending power among their residents (Phuc
& Su, 2020; WTTC, 2021). The opportunity to leverage domestic tourism
to substitute inbound tourism remains slim. Ultimately, an unemployed
workers (%)

female youth tourism worker in the Netherlands will experience better

tourism
Female

represents longer years of schooling.

44%
44%
42%
45%

0.91

welfare than an unemployed female youth tourism worker in Ethiopia

during this pandemic.
If we rank all workers globally on their earnings, an uneven income
distribution already existed before the pandemic. A worker from the top-
earning 10% quantile, on average, received US$7475 per month, and a
p-value of ANOVA test
Lower middle income
Upper middle income

worker in the bottom 10% earned just US$22 in 2017 (ILO, 2019). With
Income category

the collapse of international tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic, we

High income

expect that heterogeneous macro-economic factors and different levels

Low income

of policy support will buffer tourism workers in high income countries,

Table 2

but not in the others. For example, discretionary fiscal policy from the
European Commission well cushioned COVID's impacts on households,

7
Y.-Y. Sun et al.
High proporon of female tourism workers
Tourism High proporon of young tourism workers
job
characteriscs
Low pay in the tourism sector
Low pay for female workers in tourism
High unemployment across the whole economy
Macroeconomy
Income inequality across the whole economy
Insufficient short-term policy support on
income compensaon
Policy support
Insufficient long-term educaon program
Fig. 3. Drivers of income losses protentional among tourism workforce and income inequality.
allowing income losses to be similar to those experienced in the
2008–2009 financial crisis (Almeida et al., 2021). On the contrary,
households in low income countries not only face income losses, but also
are challenged by food insecurity, access to medicine and staple foods,
and substantial reduction of education hours (Josephson, Kilic, &
Michler, 2021). As a result, tourism workers from high income countries
who are likely to sit in the middle or higher end of the global income
distribution curve are less affected than low-income tourism workers in
poor countries. Inevitably, income losses after subsidy then result in a
further difference in labour income among tourism workers across
countries, and widens income inequality between destinations.
6. Conclusions
International travel is a luxury good and is income elastic (Falk &
Lin, 2018; Smeral, 2010). It allows international receipts to flow from
the wealthier population (tourists) to many small and medium enter­
prises, then to workers who receive a relatively lower salary in desti­
nation countries. Exporting tourism thus enables an extensive
redistribution of income among stakeholders across countries, and this
sets it apart from many natural resource exports (e.g., precious metals
and oil) where the wealth tends to centre on a selected few elite (Smith,
2004). When no international tourism is allowed in the face of the
COVID-19 pandemic, polarized income changes are expected. On one
hand, the rich get richer. The unspent international travel budget of the
wealthier household becomes another influx of investment for capital
goods, such as stocks or real estates. Increased opportunity for capital
income earners during the pandemic is one of the key factors in driving
inequality (Das et al., 2021). On the other hand, tourism vulnerable
workers become poorer compared to non-tourism workers within and
across countries.
Our study provides the global empirical evidence to explain this
challenge by reflecting the combination of tourism's inherent job char­
acteristics, the pay differences, the local economic structure, and the
unequal policy support. Our analysis has shown that there are significant
disparities in terms of economic vulnerability and job insecurity be­
tween income classes and genders. The unequal fiscal policies and
inherent economic structures further create a new geographical distri­
bution of wealth and poverty in the aftermath of crisis.
Overall, the observation of global tourism job losses speaks directly
about the social challenge of inequality. Even when the borders begin to
reopen, the short-term impact on the tourism industry may have long-
8
Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046
+
Income
+
inequality
+ within the
+ country
Risk of
+ income loss
in the
tourism
sector in
+
mes of
crises
+ Income
+ inequality
across
+ countries
+
term implications for inequalities. This circumstance manifests itself in
many possible individual tourism workers' fates: professionals who have
been out of their jobs for too long to secure re-employment and avoid
retraining; low-skilled employees who were nevertheless a family
breadwinner, plunging entire families into assistance dependence; older
employees who have not been offered retraining opportunities are
forced to work in illegal wildlife poaching or much lower-skilled jobs
(the well-known accounts of grounded airline pilots driving taxis); and
last but not least, women and young people whose skills and motivation
are wasted when traditional systems give priority to less productive
older men (Aditya, Goswami, Mendis, & Roopa, 2021; Almeida & San­
tos, 2020; Chipumuro et al., 2021; Connell, 2021).
‘Flying blind’ into a crisis such as this pandemic, in terms of infor­
mation on economic vulnerability and job insecurity has meant that
economic woes have inevitably followed, often exacerbated beyond the
support that would have been required had one acted with foresight and
precaution at the outset. Decision makers would have benefitted from
having had access to such information by the time the Coronavirus
pandemic started in earnest. This is because economic modelling for the
tourism sector could have included age, gender and income dimensions,
which is currently lacking among most assessments. Integrating a
detailed employment profile into tourism's operation allows the het­
erogeneity of tourism employees to be analysed. Equipped with this
comprehensive information, foresight and precaution could have taken
the edge off the most extreme of such vulnerabilities. This is especially
true for countries that are dependent on tourism income receipts, and
that have few other income sources, such as small island nations.
The analysis presented in this study could also serve to inform the
work of global tourism organisations and committees, such as the Global
Tourism Crisis Committee (UNWTO, 2020c) convened by the UNWTO,
which aims to provide recommendations for a harmonized approach to
restarting tourism post-COVID-19 pandemic, and to ‘build-back-better’.
The work of the committee clearly highlights the role of timely health­
care responses (e.g., administration of vaccines) for the future of
tourism, the role of workers, and the importance of supporting tourism
jobs and companies. As the UNWTO unites with Tourism Ministers
around the world to #RestartTourism (UNWTO, 2021), there is an ur­
gent need to consider economic vulnerabilities through better under­
standing the underlying tourism- inherent job characteristics, the pay
difference, the local economic structure, and the unequal policy support
for the rebuilding process. This study especially supports the inclusive
recovery for women by highlighting hotspots where most female job
Y.-Y. Sun et al. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046

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9
Y.-Y. Sun et al. Annals of Tourism Research Empirical Insights 3 (2022) 100046

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Francesco Pomponi utilities interdisciplinary approach to address societally just transi­

Ya-Yen Sun addresses tourism sustainability, focusing on economic impacts and envi­
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ronmental footprinting.

Mengyu Li studies 1) using input-output-based disaster models to assess economic,

environmental and social impacts of disasters; 2) low-carbon energy system modelling and
sector coupling strategies.

10