Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on Tourism (INTACT) "Post Pandemic Tourism: Trends and Future Directions" (INTACT 2022)

Conference name: Proceedings of the International Academic Conference on Tourism (INTACT) "Post Pandemic Tourism: Trends and Future Directions" (INTACT 2022)
Date: 30-31 May 2022
Location: Yogyakarta, Indonesia (Online)
Website: https://intact.ugm.ac.id

Dear Tourism Scholars Worldwide!
This 3rd International Academic Conference on Tourism was conducted online via Zoom (http://ugm.id/INTACT) and based in Tour & Travel Business Program, Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia. It was held on May 30–31, 2022, as a collaboration among:

1. The Center for Tourism Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada,
2. Tour & Travel Business, Vocational College, Universitas Gadjah Mada,
3. Tourism Studies Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada and
4. Master Program of Tourism Studies, The Graduate School of Universitas Gadjah Mada.

This international conference aims to discuss and provide critical views based on empirical experience and the relevant concepts to the changing trends and future directions of tourism development after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, the COVID-19 pandemic has coming to the end of its second year. This disaster has been deadly striking the tourism sector. The global tourists’ mobility has been drastically decreased to reach only 78% or 1.1 billion (Inventure, 2020) due to the lockdown policy in most tourism destinations. UNWTO estimates between US$ 910 and US$ 1,200 billion lost from the tourism industry due to the cessation of global tourist travel. The cessation of international flights has an impact on the sluggishness of activities in most tourism destinations. In addition, it is predicted that around 120 million jobs are at risk or at least vulnerable to risk. More specifically, women workers who are the largest segment of workers in the tourism sector are at risk of losing their livelihoods.

International institutions have responded to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, UNWTO offers a road map as a temporary alternative to a little bit save destination countries, namely first, mitigating socioeconomic impacts on livelihoods, especially women's work and economic security; second, increasing competitiveness and resilience, including through economic diversification, by promoting domestic and regional tourism where possible and facilitating a conducive business environment for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs); and third, encouragement for innovation and digital transformation of tourism, including the promotion of innovation and investment in digital skills, especially for workers who are temporarily out of work and for job seekers; fourth, encouragement for sustainable development of green tourism that is resilient, competitive, resource efficient and carbon neutral; fifth, coordination and partnerships to restart and transform the sector toward achieving the SDGs, ensuring tourism recovery and easing travel restrictions in a responsible manner. However, not all countries found it easy to implement those steps. Each country has different impact levels and community conditions, respectively.

Further, these INTACT papers tried to identify the concept of transformation toward the tourism resurgence practice according to the future trend of the new normal era. The papers provide discussions of post-pandemic tourism in three different levels; macro level, with regard to state regulations and policies on tourism; meso level, related to governance, development direction and tourism management practices; and micro level, related to changes in tourist behavior in traveling.

Post-pandemic has significantly brought a major disruption in the tourism industry. One of them is that the travel cost is getting more expensive because the entire product chain must adapt to the New Normal. Significant increase in investment is a must in every tourism product chain. Aviation or rail transportation modes, for example, must adapt to the need for physical distance between passengers, so that passenger capacity will be reduced even though production costs remain constant and even increase. The design of the passenger cabin itself needs to be rearranged. CHSE facilities should be added. All of them require not-even-small additional costs. These cost additions will be eventually charged to the tourists. In short, post-defense tourism demands impacts on the increasing tourist travel fares.

From the demand side, this is certainly one of the constraints to increasing travel volume. In addition to demanding high quality and guarantees on CHSE during pre-, during, and post-travel, tourists will be more selective or limit the frequency of trips. In addition, the long-term economic impact of the pandemic (unemployment and a decrease in household income) has resulted in both saving and buying potential tourists tend to be eroded in the relatively long term. The combination of the two is predicted to color the development of tourism in the post-pandemic.

The papers aim to respond to question related to strategic and creative actions taken to ensure the sustainability of tourism in the New Normal period. Questions can be specific to the following: a) what specific governance needs to be done by businesses to adapt to tourism in the post-disaster period; b) what new trends will emerge in the future development of tourism; c) the design of new products, markets and institutions that need to be created to open up new tourism opportunities in the post-demic period; and d) how will the tourist market construct future travel needs and styles? This question will be able to direct stakeholders to make the right tourism design in the post-demic period.

At the end, we hope that the papers have discussed and provided critical views based on empirical experiences and the relevant concepts to the changing trends and future directions of tourism development after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mohamad Yusuf
Head of Organizing Committee,
Head of Center for Tourism Studies