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Over the years, some major epidemics such as measles, Spanish Flu, Black Death, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Typhus have caused devastating consequences for humanity. Among the most current epidemics  Cholera, the Hong Kong flu and SARS, whose COVID-19 know has become the most recent pandemic, top the list.

COVID-19 poses a major and evolving challenge to the global community, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the tourism sector, one of the most affected.

The main economic problems arise from health systems, business, commercial and educational closures. In addition to a reduction in the productivity of a country or region. 

Sectors such as the pharmaceutical, automotive or oil industries will suffer great losses and will create effects on other economic sectors.

UNWTO underlines the importance of dialogue and international cooperation and stresses that the challenge of this pandemic also represents an opportunity to show how solidarity can go beyond borders.

UNWTO calls for financial and political support for recovery measures for tourism and for support for the sector to be included in the broader recovery plans and measures of the affected economies.

The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak will be felt throughout the tourism value chain. UNWTO Secretary General Zurab Pololikashvili further stresses that "small and medium enterprises constitute about 80% of the tourism sector and are particularly exposed, with millions of people, many of them in vulnerable communities, for whom tourism is their livelihood.

Moreover, unless countries and the airline industry coordinate measures to avoid this situation, COVID-19 will bankrupt most of the world's airlines by the end of May.

Common areas of the global recovery plans include the suspension of payments for major services and housing, as well as tax deferrals.

As has happened after other disasters that have affected tourism, this sector has reemerged using new techniques for health and safety control. We hope that in this way it will be reborn again, like a phoenix, and that the 80% that are most exposed, the small and medium industries, will be as benefited and protected as the big industries.