Policy Response to the Tourism Crisis during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Meta Policy Analysis of Select Countries

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has cracked the fragile mold of what was decided as the norm and has pushed countries to resort to various ways for survival. Tourism, a mechanism proven to bridge gaps between cultures, was worst affected on a global level, and the only flotation device utilized was policies. Yet, for states with different political ideologies, how have they responded in reality? Which ideology has become a tool to design the policy to address the tourism crisis caused by the pandemic? This has remained an unexplored field of research. Therefore, to address these questions, there is a need to look at the policies initiated by selected countries representing varied political spectrums to analyse the pragmatically working ideology during/after the pandemic. Therefore, this study aims to observe the complexities of crisis management and the shift of ideology between the usual state of government to the adoption of a foreign, even opposing ideology to rebuild after an unprecedented catastrophe. Hence, to enunciate its shift, the methodology divided its countries into ideologies based on liberal, socialist, and conservative categories and selects two countries, each of which is contributing a major portion of GDP share to the tourism industry. The study has adopted the ideological approach to examine the select policies formulated by the respective countries to revive their tourism industry,such as what are the bail-out programs, financial aids, etc. The present study relied on a meta-analysis approach to identify, summarize, and analyze how the selected countries adopted different models to identify and define policy problems. Based on the findings of the meta-analysis, the study established that countries adopted ideologies that pragmatically worked and rejected ideologies that are inherently adopted as the state’s