The “low tide” of tourist flows in the COVID-19 era. Insights into the economic and social shades of the ongoing phenomenon

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis. Many countries have implemented restrictions on population movement, instituting full or partial lockdowns in Spring 2020 as nowadays. The Coronavirus emergency has imposed the need to introduce restrictions that have also had a great impact on tourism. The interventions of the European Commission and the containment policies of the population adopted by different member States, as well as by those outside Europe, have resulted in the closure and crisis of the tourism sector in most of the destinations. What it can be observed it’s a sort of “low tide” of the tourist flows all around the world. Moving from these considerations, the paper aims at contributes to the debate on the binomial COVID-19 and tourism. After an introductory frame of the pandemic ongoing phenomenon, the paper focuses on the dynamics relating to the crucial sectors of air and cruise tourism, moving then to the analysis of the coastal and inland areas’ situation. The proposed analysis is developed through the consideration of three elements characterizing the current scenario: the relevance of the pandemic shock wave; the adaptability of companies and operators’ behaviour to changes and challenges; the unexpected and countertrend situation of arising positive externalities in some areas, such as the internal ones.