The Immediate Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Tourism in Mauritius

Mauritius - 5 December 2020

Trade topics: Tourism

This study assesses the initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourist arrivals for Mauritius. It provides interesting COVID-19 and tourism statistics for Mauritius in the first place, and preliminary analysis of the monthly time series data (tourist arrivals) confirmed that the series departed from their original trends after the outbreak of COVID-19: observed values were lower than those predicted by the selected optimal forecast model. The CausalImpact methodology was subsequently used to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on the island’s tourism market during the first quarter of 2020 (January 2020-March 2020). The findings indicated that the COVID-19 had a statistically significant and negative effect on Mauritius during the first quarter of 2020.

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