How to better manage tourism in times of pandemic? Moving forward on a discussion we should have had before the 2020 crisis

Taking advantage of tourists’ intensive flow, the SARS-CoV-2 virus rapidly spread causing thousands of deaths globally. Trying to contain the already pandemic virus, government travel restrictions were suddenly imposed. Consequently, the tourism industry, which at that moment employed one in ten workers globally, suddenly collapsed. Hundreds of thousands of workers immediately lost their income. Flights were cancelled, and thousands of tourists were stuck abroad with no means to return to their home countries. The gravity of the situation raised the question of whether there was scholarly knowledge that could have helped manage tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic. To answer this question, a methodical literature review was performed, allowing for up to 900 publications to be analysed. The keywords used were pandemic, tourism, tourist and travel. Based on this process, 63 publications were selected for further analysis. Among these, less than 5% were focused on the tourism side of the problem.  As such, this research concludes that, by the time the novel coronavirus emerged, there was, virtually, no scholarly knowledge on how to manage tourism during pandemic times so as to avoid chaos, and that the scholarly community studying related issues is very small. Moving forward, this article recommends that research funding agencies and universities encourage the sound development of this area of knowledge. Aspects that should be investigated include when, how and by whom should tourism be halted, as well as the feasibility of a Tourism World Fund for supporting related costs.