Impact of domestic tourism on economy under COVID-19: The perspective of tourism satellite accounts

Abstract

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic reversed the ongoing upsurge in the global tourism industry. Yet compared with still-stagnant international tourism, domestic tourism has shown signs of recovery. This study takes Guangdong Province, China as a case for regional domestic tourism and adopts the tourism satellite account (TSA) method to assess domestic tourism's status. A pre- and post-pandemic comparison is conducted to map the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on domestic tourism's economic contribution. The TSA results show that the direct contribution of domestic tourism to Guangdong's economy fell from 2.53% to 1.20% across these timeframes. Findings also reveal changes in visitor composition by places of origin and in industries' proportional contributions to tourism.