Abstract:
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which is one of its kind of humanitarian disasters, has affected
people and businesses worldwide, triggering a global economic crisis. In this aspect, the tourism
sector is not being left behind. The pandemic has not only affected the foreign exchange earnings
(FEE) but also affected various regional developments, job opportunities, thereby disrupting the
local communities as a whole. As there has been a substantial decline in the arrivals of overseas
tourists in India in 2020, the paper aims to predict foreign tourists’ arrival in India and FEE using
artificial neural networks (ANN). Furthermore, we analyse the impact of COVID-19 based on four
scenarios considering with and without lockdown in terms of loss and gain in FEE. Lastly, the
results obtained will help policymakers make necessary strategic and operational decisions,
along with maximizing the FEE.