WTTC: The December 26 Tsunamis Played Less Havoc on Travel than the 9/11 Attacks

The impact of the killer waves that ravaged South East Asia on December 26 last year -with losses estimated in $3 billion- were forty times less damaging than the fallout of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. four years ago.

Richard Miller, Executive Vice President of WTTC said, “The total impact of the Dec tsunami on 2005 Travel and Tourism is expected to approach US$ 3 billion and cost more than one quarter millions jobs. In most cases the jobs will be recovered as soon as traffic begins to return to the affected areas, but in the meantime the economies will continue to suffer.

Although the impact of the tsunami has been significant, it is generally limited for Travel & Tourism to a short list of specific destinations.”

The WTTC report shows that the impact of 9/11 in the United States was 37.5 times larger in monetary terms than the tsunami and 2.8 times larger in terms of impact on employment. The impact of SARS in Hong Kong equals 40% of the tsunami monetarily and 10% in terms of impact on employment. The Bali bombing in 2002 equals 20% of the tsunami impact monetarily and was 1.8 times larger in terms of impact on employment.

WTTC also released its special assessment of the December 2004 Tsunami on three Indian Ocean economies: Maldives, Sri Lanka and Thailand. In each case, the analyses showed significant declines in visitor exports, while increases were reported in government expenditures and capital investment for marketing, promotion, recovery and rebuilding efforts to assist the industry.

Visitor Exports are expected to fall 29.9% from pre-Tsunami growth forecasts for 2005, while Government Expenditures and Capital Investment are expected to increase 6.6% and 14.6% respectively. The bottom-line impact for The Maldives is a loss of 30.4% or US$55 million in industry contribution to 2005 GDP and 10,440 jobs.