The effects of the COVID-19 epidemic on the tourism sector: The case of Muğla province

In the historical process, human being has experienced various pandemic diseases. Today, the ease of transportation brought by the developing technology accelerates the spread of emerging pandemics. Thus, while the number of cases and deaths increases, negative consequences in terms of social, economic, political, cultural and societal aspects increase. The effect of these problems differ from country to country. Countries are implementing various measures in line with the possibilities they have in order to eliminate or minimize the effect of the emerging pandemic. The COVID-19 outbreak, which emerged in China in December 2019, was declared a pandemic in a short time. With the COVID-19 pandemic spreading around the world in a short time, countries have implemented various restrictions and bans in line with their own means. The pandemic, which is effective at the global level, has led to the disruption of production and supply chains. Thus, the pandemic caused the global economy to shrink and created crises. The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which negatively affected many sectors, on the tourism sector were also severe. The first case was detected in Turkey on March 10, 2020 and most measures were implemented in our country as well as in the world. Over time, the measures have changed and gradually normalization has been started with the application of the vaccine. With the effect of the pandemic, tourism mobility has decreased in Turkey as in the world. This decrease has also been seen in tourism enterprises located in Muğla Province. Thus, there were fluctuations in the Turkish economy. The aim of this study is to determine the effects of the pandemic on the tourism sector and the solutions that can be developed against the negative effects. For this purpose, Muğla was determined as the research universe. Semi-structured interview and open-ended question form techniques from qualitative research methods were used as data collection methods. The obtained data were subjected to content analysis and suggestions were presented fort the findings obtained.