It's beginning to look more and more like BP's $20 billion liability fund is a victory for the oil company. A new report indicates that damage to the Gulf travel industry alone could exceed that sum, with a loss of $22.7 billion. The spill also could wipe out 400,000 tourism-related jobs in the region. Although such projections make a lot of assumptions, Politico reports that the Gulf's travel industry is already beginning to feel the effect of the spill, according to Oxford Economics USA managing director Adam Sacks:
"If you go across cities along the Gulf Coast, the declines in interest, in the first 20 days of May, there were already double-digit declines," Sacks said on a conference call. "The real wild card is people's perceptions."
Read the full story at Politico.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
Daniel Indiviglio was an associate editor at The Atlantic from 2009 through 2011. He is now the Washington, D.C.-based columnist for Reuters Breakingviews. He is also a 2011 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow through the Phillips Foundation.