An alarming surge in COVID-19 infections in Turkey, coupled with an ongoing gloom in the global travel industry, threatens to wreck hopes of recovery in the tourism sector, a vital source of hard-currency earnings for the crisis-hit country.

The Turkish government is under fire for mismanaging the pandemic, especially for holding crowded party conventions across the country in February and March. A sharp spike in infections led Ankara to reimpose partial lockdown measures last week, dampening hopes that major European countries, which provide the largest tourist flows to Turkey, could relax travel restrictions to the country ahead of the high tourism season. Ankara’s political frictions with Moscow over Ukraine might prove an additional setback for Turkey’s tourism industry, as it seeks to emerge from a terrible contraction last year. With little government support for the sector, tourism revenues plunged to $10 billion last year from about $30 billion in 2019, while revenues from air travel dropped by $8 billion to $3.5 billion.

Even before the COVID-19 upsurge in Turkey, the global prospects for a rebound in tourism were dimming. In January, an international survey among tourism experts, conducted by the UN World Tourism Organization, found that only 45% of respondents envisage better prospects for 2021 compared to last year, while 25% expect a similar performance and 30% foresee a worse outcome. International tourist arrivals plunged 74% in 2020, representing an estimated loss of $1.3 trillion in revenues — more than 11 times the loss during the 2009 global economic crisis, according to the organization. The pandemic torpedoed an upbeat trend in global tourism, which had seen tourist arrivals worldwide grow 4% in 2019 to reach 1.5 billion and had spurred forecasts of a similar increase in 2020.

After the unprecedented collapse of international travel last year, “experts foresee growing demand for open-air and nature-based tourism activities, with domestic tourism and ‘slow travel’ experiences gaining increasing interest,” the organization said. Yet most experts remain pessimistic that the tourism industry could return to pre-pandemic levels before 2023. According to the survey, 43% of respondents point to 2023, while 41% expect a return to pre-pandemic levels in 2024 or later. “The gradual rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine is expected to help restore consumer confidence, contribute to ease travel restrictions and slowly normalize travel during the year ahead,” it said.