Remittance workers, or migrant workers who send a chunk of their salary to their families back home, are some of the largest sources of external financing for developing economies. 

As many were employed by construction companies, project shutdowns led to concerns about these crucial lifelines drying up. 

Thankfully, that did not happen, as the drop, while still impactful, was not as drastic as predicted by the World Bank. 

Throughout much of 2022, remittances kept increasing, but border closures hampered cash exchanges. 

This paved the way for innovation by remittance transfer providers.

Tourism

Southeast Asia and island nations such as the Maldives were highly dependent on tourism before the pandemic.

Many tourism and hospitality businesses had to shut down due to the lack of foreign tourists, leading the World Travel and Tourism Council to predict the region would lose 2.7 trillion USD in 2020.

As borders shut to the outside world, the hospitality industry had to turn to new ways of finding and attracting tourists.

One such example was Mongolia, where the government banned international arrivals early in 2020.

Domestic tourism increased all across Asia throughout the pandemic.

However, spending was low and did not compensate for the lack of international tourists, as not all countries in Asia have sufficient, or wealthy enough, domestic travelers.

As borders open up and travelers feel comfortable going abroad again, many countries need to change the way that policymakers and businesses market to prospective tourists. 

In the case of the Maldives, they played their cards right with swift, regionalized lockdowns. 

This has allowed its tourism sector to recover more robustly than others.

The reasons for this extend beyond pure lockdown management, however.

As travelers take to their airplane seats, they have shown an increasing interest in sustainability, which the Maldives have been willing to embrace.

Media and culture

For those stuck at home, Covid meant not being able to go on cultural outings.

All around Asia, museums and theaters were forced to shut down.

For the fishermen culture museum in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen, that meant having to adapt the museum's approach.

And all around Asia, traditional culture troupes had to find a way to reach their audience during the pandemic.

This rise of social media such as TikTok or Douyin has given it a boost as it became more accessible than even before the pandemic. 

These kinds of media successes indicated that there was a hunger for more local content production in Asia.

Covid has started the ball rolling to increase investment in digital infrastructure, which will be beneficial for education, work, but also culture.

Indeed, in part due to the lockdowns, Bangladesh alone added nine million new social media users in 2020. This has completely revolutionized independent content production there.

South Asia, which has a breadth of traditional media from TV to film, had until now not developed a strong local social media identity.

These production houses, spurred by the success of local content during the pandemic, have also managed to set up longer term productions.

New lens

Covid has changed our lives in profound ways and the impacts on our daily lives were made more intense as countries turned inward in the haste to protect lives and livelihoods.

But the disease has also taught us to see the world with a new lens.

The unprecedented challenges to global mobility and the basic need to keep safe and healthy in uncertain times gave birth to new ways of doing things and fresh impetus to adopt innovations.

Sources

World happiness report 2021

Impact of covid preparedness on happiness.

JF Helliwell, R Layard, JD Sachs, JED Neve

Our World in Data

COVID Statistics aggregated from official country COVID data.

WHO

Outbreak information and statistics

ADB

Financial statistics about the Asia-Pacific region post-pandemic

Credits