The effect of COVID-19 on the tourism sector: The case of Turkey

The place and importance of tourism in the economies of countries is quite high. Tourism has many benefits for the economies of countries such as having an income generating effect on the economy, positive contribution to the balance of payments and a positive effect on employment. Tourism demand is flexible; This causes tourism to be one of the sectors most affected by adverse events such as crisis, war, terrorism, natural disaster, and epidemic. It is known that diseases such as Plague, SARS, Swine Flu and Ebola, which have been common in the world until today, have caused great losses in the World Tourism economy. The new Coronavirus (COVID-19), which was first detected in the world in a market where seafood and live animals are sold in Wuhan province of China in December 2019, spread rapidly all over the world and affected everywhere. In this study, the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the tourism sector in Turkey was investigated, and the impact was primarily examined by considering the income generated from tourism, the number of visitors entering and leaving the country, average length of stay, facility occupancy rates, facility overnight stays, and the study was carried out. As a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, it was concluded that the tourism sector was affected negatively by experiencing a very serious decrease in tourism income, number of visitors, and hotel occupancy rates. Afterwards, the relationship between the number of daily cases and daily deaths caused by the COVID-19 epidemic between the period 2020: 03 and 2020: 12 and the BIST Tourism index, which shows the share performance of tourism companies according to the transaction in Borsa Istanbul, was examined by time series analysis, and as a result of the analysis. On the other hand, a significant relationship was determined between the number of deaths caused by COVID-19 and the tourism sector, and it was concluded that a 1% increase in the number of deaths had a negative effect of 0.036% in the tourism sector.