The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Tourism Industry in Selected Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) Countries

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry in the CA region and consider how it may change the society, economy, and tourism in the countries within this region. This study focused on eight countries in the CAREC region—Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan and a quarterly panel regression model from 2000q1–2020q4 was applied. Variables apply in this study are international tourists arrive in the country (Y), , and (X) is a set of independent variables. These parameters are total confirmed COVID-19 cases (conf), total number of deceased people (cond), as well as other control variables, including population density (popden), GDP per capita (GDP), cost of health—out-of-pocket health expenditure—(health), the total per hospital beds (capacity), and the total number of healthcare workers – nurses and midwives (nandMW).