Not a Good Record

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Official-ESTA.com, a third-party visa application website for the United States Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), crunched numbers from the World Travel and Tourism Council and The World Bank to determine the countries with the greatest loss of tourism revenue in the first ten months of 2020. They are as follows:

United States: $147.245 billion
Spain: $46.707 billionFrance: $42.036 billionThailand: $37.504 billionGermany: $34.641 billionItaly: $29.664 billionUnited Kingdom: $27.889 billionAustralia: $27.206 billionJapan: $26.027 billionHong Kong: $24.069 billion

Wow, ten countries, $400 billion! But it gets worse:
Official-ESTA.com has also crunched the numbers for the countries that have lost the highest percentage of their GDP due to the pandemic's effect on tourism. They are as follows:
Macao (a special administrative region of China): 43.1%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Aruba: 38.1%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Turks and Caicos: 37.8%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Antigua and Barbuda: 33.6%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Maldives: 31.1%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Northern Mariana Islands: 28.5%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">St. Lucia: 26.8%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Palau: 26.3%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 1rem 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Grenada: 26.0%!&(MISSING)lt;li style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin: 1rem 0px 0px 2rem; line-height: 1.6;">Seychelles: 20.6%!<(MISSING)br>
Out of all of these places, I have only been to Macao. And it seemed to me that gambling and casino related $$ are the focus here. I know people who are from Macao, so I do sympathize, despite the opulent casinos. So, when is recovery likely?

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