Economic impact of the 2015 MERS outbreak on the Republic of Korea’s tourism-related industries

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Health Secur
• Personal Author:
  Joo, Heesoo ; Maskery, Brian A. ; Berro, Andre D. ; Rotz, Lisa D. ; Lee, Yeon-Kyeng ; Brown, Clive M.
• Description:
  Background
  
  The 2015 Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) outbreak in the Republic of Korea (ROK) is an example of an infectious disease outbreak initiated by international travelers to a high-income country.
  
  Objective
  
  To determine the economic impact of the MERS outbreak on the tourism and travel-related service sectors, including accommodation, food and beverage, and transportation, in the ROK.
  
  Methods
  
  We projected monthly numbers of non-citizen arrivals and indices of services for three travel-related service sectors during and after the MERS outbreak (June 2015–June 2016) using seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average models. Tourism losses were estimated by multiplying the monthly differences between projected and actual numbers of non-citizen arrivals by average tourism expenditure per capita. Estimated tourism losses were allocated to travel-related service sectors to understand the distribution of losses across service sectors.
  
  Results
  
  The MERS outbreak was correlated with a reduction of 2.1 million non-citizen visitors corresponding with US $2.6 billion in tourism loss for the ROK. Estimated losses in the accommodation, food and beverage service, and transportation sectors associated with the decrease of non-citizen visitors were US $542 million, US $359 million, and US $106 million, respectively. The losses were demonstrated by lower than expected indices of services for the accommodation, and food and beverage service sectors in June and July 2015 and for the transportation sector in June 2015.
  
  Conclusions
  
  The results support previous findings that public health emergencies due to traveler-associated outbreaks of infectious diseases can cause significant losses to the broader economies of affected countries.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Coronavirus Infections Disease Outbreaks Housing Humans Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Republic Of Korea Restaurants Travel
• Keywords:
  Chlorination Economic Burden Of Disease Economic Impact Household Water Treatment MERS Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Outbreak Safe Water Storage Tourism Travel Industry
• Source:
  Health Secur. 17(2):100-108
• Pubmed ID:
  30969152
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC6560634
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  CC999999/Intramural CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  17
• Issue:
  2
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:d171309f12408bef9f28d4cd9ff46eb7977dcc7ae15498922a44c045ec9b3b2d
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/79246/cdc_79246_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 591.85 KB ]