Tourism plays an essential role in the economic, social, and cultural development of many countries. Globally, tourism numbers reached 1.5 billion, generating approximately $1.5 trillion in spending [1]. The main positive effects of tourism include economic benefits such as tax revenues, job creation, or diversification of local economies [2,3,4]. However, the tourism industry is also vulnerable to ‘shock’ like a pandemic or a natural disaster. Tourism is among the most affected sectors by the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, that has caused a global collapse in tourism demand due to severe disruptions in travel and mobility [5,6,7,8]. Due to air travel suspensions, lockdowns and social distancing protocols implemented worldwide, the tourism sector has been particularly impacted [9]. Current estimates indicate that 75 million jobs in various tourism sectors around the world are in crisis, and the industry has lost more than $2.1 trillion in turnover [10]. According to the latest reports from the World Trade Organization and the World Travel Council, revenue from the industrial tourism section has dropped by a third to $450 billion due to the outbreak of COVID-19. The World Bank report on the economic impacts of the pandemic shows a drastic reduction in personal income, the growth of trade and the GDP of many countries. In addition, literature has emerged that examines the economic and social impacts of COVID-19 on tourism, as well as employee uncertainty and business innovation, and how tourism might look in the future [11,12,13,14]. 

Iran offers unique natural features and attractions that position it as a prime nature-based tourism destination in the world [16]. During the COVID-19 pandemic, all tourism sectors in Iran were affected, just as they were in other developed or developing countries. In Iran, the disruption of domestic and international travel due to COVID-19 and related unemployment have led to a crisis in the tourism industry [17]. According to the Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines, and Agriculture of Iran [18], travel decreased by 54% in 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. The employment status of more than 80,000 tourism industry employees has been severely threatened. Accommodation, hospitality offers, air, rail and road transport, cultural, artistic and recreational industries, educational services, and food production have all been directly affected. The National Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Administration stated that the spread of COVID-19 not only caused the bankruptcy of many tourism agencies, hotels, and restaurants, but it has also imposed expenses of more than $121 million on the tourism sector and resulted in the death of more than 1000 employers. As a result, travel offices, tourism services and facilities, guides, and educational institutions have suffered major economic losses [18]. COVID-19 has also impacted on the social and psychological dimensions of Iran. Issues arising from the pandemic include increasing levels of anxiety among tourists and tourism communities, escalating health problems, increasing levels of social tension, the inability of the government to effectively control the spread of the disease due to the lack of coordination among local government organizations, and an overall decrease in social resilience. However, the spread of COVID-19 has also had noticeable positive impacts on the environment, including a decrease in pollution, waste, the consumption of materials and energy and the deterioration of ecosystems [19,20,21] used for nature-based tourism activities as reported elsewhere [22,23,24].

Tourism as a human-based industry is highly vulnerable to the complex influences of a pandemic [3,4,26,27]. To reveal vulnerabilities, a considerable body of literature has studied the impacts of other pandemics and found pathways of influence on the tourism industry such as by SARS [28], avian influenza [29], Ebola [7,30], and influenza [31].

For instance, Sönmez et al. [32] investigated the effects of COVID-19 on the health and safety of immigrant hospitality workers in the United States. Their results revealed that restrictions and lockdowns have devastated tourism-dependent destinations and displaced millions of vulnerable workers, causing them to lose their livelihoods. Beck & Hensher [33] explained the impact of COVID-19 on travel and home activities in Australia during the bans, such as the reduction in social transitions, increasing virtual and online education, the launch of travel bans and closures of air agencies, closures of cinemas, leisure, and sports centers, and consequently unemployment and economic losses. Sharma et al. [34] studied the revival of the tourism industry in the post COVID-19 era showing that tourism and economic growth depend on various factors, in particular the role of local communities in tourism. Qiu et al. [35] studied the social costs of tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic. They explored residents’ perceptions of the dangers of tourism activities and the sequential social costs and public health risks. Yang et al. [36] stated that welfare policies in response to COVID-19 should be revised to provide financial support in all aspects, including tourism, health, and other affected areas. Their results revealed that hotel, airline, shipping, and rental car sectors had experienced a significant economic loss during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sharma & Nicolau [37] traced the impacts of COVID-19 on travel, tourism, and trade. These studies have identified various impacts of COVID-19 on the tourism industry such unemployment, bankruptcy of businesses, growth of economic pressure on tourism destinations and similar as collated in Table 1 [35,37,38].

In spite of this growing body of literature, research is lacking on practical mitigation strategies to deal with COVID-19 impacts on tourism and related businesses. To address this gap and to present appropriate strategies to control negative impacts of COVID-19 here used an Impact Pathway (IP) approach. This approach is commonly adopted to assess the type and extent of impacts on projects and events such as agricultural [48] aquatic [49]. IP analysis provides a comprehensive evaluation of change processes (from inputs to impacts) influencing projects and events and allows to evaluate analyses (i.e., a process of converting input to impact) and decision-making processes over time. In addition, it accommodates the viewpoints of different stakeholders and incorporates information from a variety of sources. This approach is structural in that it collects and classifies the knowledge available among a group of experts who are sufficiently familiar with the field in question [48]. As shown in Table 1, a list of impacts of COVID-19 on tourism was provided through the examination of previous studies.