Tourism in Brazil loses US$70 billion and 474,000 formal jobs to pandemic

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to the National Confederation of Trade of Goods, Services, and Tourism (CNC), the sector was operating at about 48% of its monthly revenue capacity at the end of May this year.

“The recovery has proven to be much more complex for tourism than for other activities,” said economist Fabio Bentes, who is responsible for the CNC study.

More than half (52%) of the losses incurred so far in the sector (R$355 billion) are concentrated in the states of São Paulo (R$142.6 billion) and Rio de Janeiro (R$43.4 billion).

The CNC’s estimate takes into account what tourism will stop taking in from the second half of March 2020 to the end of May, based on information from cyclical and structural surveys conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in addition to historical series related to the flow of passengers and aircraft in Brazil’s 16 main airports.

The employment data consider statistics from the General Register of Employed and Unemployed (Caged) of the Ministry of Economic.

Bentes points out that the service sector as a whole has been slow to respond to the health crisis. It is uncertain at this time how the population’s vaccination rate will evolve in the coming months. It is assumed that the record decline in the industry’s sales volume of 7.8% in 2020 will only be partially compensated for in the current year 2021. Specialists speak of a 4.6% increase in sales.

The industry suffers from restrictions on the circulation of domestic and especially foreign tourists in Brazil has. Improvement is expected only in the second half of 2021.

The CNC again lowered its forecast for tourism sales volume growth in 2021 from 18.2% to 16.7%, after a 36.6% slump last year.

“I believe that the return to pre-pandemic levels will not happen until the second half of 2022. This forecast does not include significant reversals of the pandemic or prolonged interruptions in vaccination. When this happens, the recovery tends to be much slower,” says Fabio Bentes.