COVID-19, Tourist Destinations and Prospects for Recovery (eBook)

Despite the fact that the African tourism industry is prone to disturbances such as diseases, extreme weather events, civil unrest, wars, and other shocks, nothing could have prepared this destination for the devastating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the absence of government or international agency budget support, the pandemic challenged the African tourism market to its core. The focus of this book is to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the African tourism destination market as well as its prospects for recovery. A chapter written by the editorial team introduces the book. Following the introduction, the book offers chapters evaluating the pandemic's impact on African tourism. Chapters in the second part of the book discuss tourism recovery and how some destinations have survived the pandemic. The book concludes with a chapter providing policy recommendations and practical implementation advice. The book is part of a 3 volume series.

?Prof Kaitano Dube is currently employed as an Ecotourism Management Lecturer at Vaal University of Technology. He currently serves as a Faculty Research Professor for the Faculty of Human Science. He is a respected tourism geographer who serves on a number of editorial boards, namely the Journal of Tourism Geographies and Associate Editor for Cogent Social Science, the tourism section and Associate Editor for Frontiers in Sustainable Tourism. He is widely published in tourism, aviation, climate change and sustainability. He has edited and published a number of books and several highly cited journal articles over the past couple of years. As a tourism specialist Professor Dube has served as an external examiner, program reviewer and accrediting specialist.

Prof. Ishmael Mensah is a Professor of tourism and hospitality management and Ghana Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Cape Coast. He holds a Ph.D. Tourism degree from the same university and is a Certified Hospitality Educator (CHE) by the American Hotel and Lodging Association as well as a Member of the Institute of Hospitality (MIH). He was a fellow under the Ghana Tourism Capacity Development Initiative at Georgia State University. He has also served as a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Girona and an External Expert at Hunan City University. He has published five books, eight book chapters and over 30 research articles in high-ranking academic journals on a number of topics, including environmental management in hotels, service quality and community-based tourism development. He is currently the Editor-In-Chief of the African Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management.

Prof. Lazarus Chapungu researches contemporary environmental issues, climate change, tourism, sustainable development and biodiversity management. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of South Africa. He has worked as a senior lecturer and research chair in the Department of Physics, Geography and Environmental Science at Great Zimbabwe University. He served as a chapter scientist, contributing author and glossary editor in the 6th Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group III Chapter 2. Lazarus holds the portfolio of Vice Chair of the programs committee of the board of directors at the Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC), a non-governmental organisation seeking to build community resilience to climate change and enable recovery from man-made and natural disasters. His qualifications include a PhD in Environmental Science, a Master's degree in Environmental Policy and Planning, a professional diploma in Applied Monitoring and Evaluation and a program certificate in project management.