The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine on tourism economy development in Cyprus and Croatia

Abstract

In the years 2020–2021, the global tourism economy faced a huge crisis related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its particular waves. The year 2022 was supposed to be the beginning of the reconstruction of the inbound tourism sector in the world. However, for Cyprus and Croatia, the events of February 24, 2022, called into question the continued functioning of a large part of the inbound tourism sector. The aim of this article is to answer the question: what was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the size and structure of foreign inbound tourism to Cyprus and Croatia? The second aim of the article is to answer the question: what is the expected impact of the war in Ukraine on the tourism sector of the Cypriot and Croatian economies? The methods used in the article were: the analysis of statistical data and the analysis of literature.