The world is slowly emerging from the grips of the coronavirus pandemic but COVID-19 could leave a bitter legacy. Although many businesses have been able to adapt to fit in with "the new normal", some have fallen victim to lockdown.

Read on to discover some of the major industries that could need months – or even years – to recover fully, as well as the sectors that might have been changed forever by the impact of COVID. All dollar values in US dollars. 

Amid widespread border restrictions, global air travel has been decimated. In the US alone, passenger numbers fell a whopping 96% in April 2020. Almost two years on, the sector still isn’t back to full health.

Global airline revenue amounted to $666 billion (£490bn) in 2019, according to management consultancy Bain & Company, and the industry is highly unlikely to see numbers that high in 2022 or 2023. In fact, Bain & Company has modelled three "recovery scenarios" for the industry, each of which comes with a revenue forecast...

Bain & Company's most conservative estimate, based in the event of a "drifting" recovery, places airline revenue at $392 billion (£288bn) by the end of this year. Meanwhile, its "baseline" recovery scenario suggests the industry could reach $432 billion (£317.5bn), and its "accelerated recovery" scenario is valued at $461 billion (£339bn).

The company lowered its projections following the outbreak of the Omicron variant in late 2021, and it's possible that any future outbreaks, which are more likely to occur in winter, could exacerbate seasonal variation in airline revenue.

Combined with low revenues over the last two years and widespread staff shortages due to the virus, it's not surprising that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) believes air traffic won't reach pre-pandemic levels until 2024 at the earliest.

With the air travel sector still struggling, it's unsurprising that the demand for new aircraft has dropped, too. As their airline clientele pulled out all the stops to survive, aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing and Airbus – which together supply more than 90% of the world's commercial planes – were in big trouble.

In June 2020, Airbus cut 15,000 jobs, accounting for around 20% of its global workforce. Meanwhile, its rival Boeing has suffered not only due to the pandemic but also due to safety concerns around its 737 Max jet. As a result, the manufacturer cut 30,000 jobs in 2020, a drop of just under 20%.

It's not all doom and gloom for the sector though. At the end of last year, Airbus reported record net profits of $4.7 billion (£3.4bn) and claimed it expects to deliver 720 commercial aircrafts this year, up from 611 in 2021.

However, CEO Guillaume Faury has stressed that "the pandemic is not yet behind us", a reminder that the looming threat of potential new variants could easily send the company back to square one. 

Due to lockdowns and travel restrictions, the hotel industry has endured similar difficulties. Occupancy rates in tourist hotspots around the world plummeted by as much as 97% when stay-at-home orders took their toll in March 2020, causing hotel stock prices to drop and millions of hotel workers to lose their jobs.

The sector has undeniably started to bounce back; according to a press release from STR, which provides market data on the hospitality industry, hotel rates during Lunar New Year in China this year were higher than they were in 2019. US rates have also rebounded, reaching pre-pandemic levels by summer 2021.  

But although holidaymakers are checking into hotel rooms in their droves, a September 2021 article from NBC News highlights a key threat to the hospitality industry: the lack of business clients. As businesses increasingly look to video conferencing instead of meeting face-to-face, rates of global business travel have dropped dramatically.

According to Chip Rogers, president of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, "people mistakenly believe that Americans going on vacations supports the hotel industry, and while it does to a certain level, more than half of our revenue is derived from business travel".

Restaurants across the world, ranging from fast-food outlets to fine-dining establishments, were forced to shut their doors during lockdown.

Now that restrictions around the world have been relaxed, it's business as usual for many eateries. But the damage to the industry has already been done. America's restaurant industry shed a record 5.5 million jobs in April 2020 – more than any other sector – and in June that year, it was estimated that the US restaurant and food service sector had lost nearly $120 billion (£91.3bn) during the first three months of the pandemic alone.

Fast-forward almost two years and the outlook for the industry remains uncertain. According to Forbes, US restaurant sales in August last year were a whopping $110 billion (£80.8bn) lower than pre-pandemic projections for 2021 – and it's not just because people have become used to eating at home.

The so-called "Great Resignation" has seen restaurant workers resign in their thousands, leaving many establishments understaffed. To emerge from the pandemic in full health, the industry may need to focus on attracting employees, as well as attracting more customers...

According to the World Economic Forum, public transport use in major cities, including Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, and Washington, fell by a whopping 75-85% when the pandemic hit.

Almost a year later, in February 2021, many people were still reluctant to get back on buses, subways, trains, and trams. More than half of Americans admitted that they'd used public transport less, or not at all, since the outbreak of COVID-19.

The sector faces an uncertain future. Much like the hotel industry, public transport has been badly hit by the rise of remote working, with far fewer people needing to commute each day. Many have also become accustomed to taking taxis while governments were advising against the use of public transport, and are unwilling to change their habits now. Uber's revenue, for instance, increased by a significant 36.22% from 2020 to 2021.

On the other hand, Market Research Future believes that the skyrocketing cost of living could force more of us to take public transport, giving the sector a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.11% from 2017 to 2027. Only time will tell when, and how, the industry will get back on track.

People might be reluctant to get back on the bus but getting behind the wheel could also prove tricky. Since the pandemic began, automakers have been slammed with a triple whammy of factory and dealership closures, supply chain disruption, and sharply declining consumer demand, according to the International Labour Organization.

In the UK, new car sales sunk by 4.4% in September 2020, marking the lowest number of September sales since 1999. Pictured are thousands of unsold cars being stored at the RAF Chipping Warden aerodrome in Northamptonshire, England.

In the US, meanwhile, car sales in the second quarter of 2020 were at their lowest levels since the Great Depression.

To make matters worse, shortages of microchips, plastics, and even seating foam are crippling the automobile industry further, with analysts now expecting the disruption to continue into 2023. 

The coronavirus pandemic had initially been described by industry insiders as "a perfect storm for charities". However, while demand for charitable services has increased, the number of volunteers has fallen, sickness levels among paid staff have rocketed, and fundraising income has crashed, with charities facing a £12.4 billion ($16.3bn) income shortfall in the UK alone by March 2021.

A report from the UK Charity Commission in October 2021 found that over 90% of charities had been negatively impacted by COVID-19, with 60% losing income and 32% missing volunteers. 

However, charitable giving from individuals in the US actually increased during the pandemic, according to the National Philanthropic Trust.

This could have been because lockdowns left many families with extra cash. But now that inflation has reached its highest level since 1982, lots of people have been forced to tighten their purse strings. As NY-based payments firm Sekure Merchants explains on its website: "Generally, as income and wealth increase, so does household charitable giving".

In short, as disposable income falls for many Americans, we're likely to see a sharp decline in the amount of money given to charities in 2022, leaving the sector struggling to cover the shortfall.

The global childcare industry faced its biggest-ever challenge during the pandemic, with stay-at-home orders and social distancing policies resulting in a massive drop in demand.

In the US, 61% of childcare providers temporarily shut during the pandemic and under half (46%) had reopened by 22 June 2020. Additionally, during the first UK lockdown, "fewer than 250,000 children aged 0 to 4 were attending childcare on a given day, compared to around 1.4 million before the pandemic", the Institute for Fiscal Studies reports.

As the world has reopened, that figure has gone back up. But take-up in America peaked at 420,000 children prior to the school summer holidays last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

With more people than ever now working from home, the demand for childcare services has dropped – and the number of available spaces has dropped with it. In Oregon, for example, the number of childcare spots fell by 35% during the pandemic, partly due to a lack of staff. The sector lost 3,700 jobs between last November and December, according to Business Insider, with professionals resigning in search of better pay.

To make matters worse, childcare services are more expensive than ever as a result, leaving fewer families able to afford them as inflation continues to rise. 

Cinemas across the world were forced to shut down in accordance with social distancing regulations and bans on mass gatherings, and many sadly closed their doors for good.

Cineworld, which owns Cineworld and Picturehouse Cinemas in the UK and Regal Cinemas in the US, shut most venues in mid-March 2020. At the beginning of October, it announced that all venues would temporarily close again, resulting in 45,000 job losses. The chain had to raise more than $1 billion (£730m) to afford to reopen last year but now that its screens are open for business once more, the industry faces another major threat...

Some film studios are now releasing films straight onto their streaming services, such as Disney's Mulan and Marvel's Black Widow. In December 2020, Warner Bros announced that it would release all of its films on streaming service HBO Max at the same time as at cinemas as part of a new "hybrid" strategy. 

Film studios' commitment to streaming is a grave threat to the cinema industry, which may struggle to attract customers who have got into the habit of watching movies at home. Figures from movie industry data site The Numbers suggest that the quantity of cinema tickets sold in the US this year will total around 511 million, less than half the number of tickets sold in 2019 (which sat close to 1.3 million). 

During the first lockdown of March 2020, shoppers spent a whopping $11,000 (£8.1k) on Amazon every second.

Consumers had no choice but to buy products online at the peak of the pandemic. However, now that the world is reopening, many people are reluctant to give up the convenience of e-commerce. 

Even before COVID-19, analysts believed that e-commerce sales would increase year-on-year. Now, Statista predicts that 24.5% of worldwide retail sales will take place online by 2025. With over half of Americans admitting that they started buying more products online during the pandemic, it's likely that coronavirus has accelerated an already inevitable trend.

Coronavirus forced the closure of gyms and sports centres across the world, and major players in the industry, such as Planet Fitness and GYM Group PLC, saw their share prices nosedive as a result.

When gyms and leisure centres finally reopened, people were initially slow to return; according to a survey by Peloton, 59% of Americans said they didn't plan to renew their gym membership after the pandemic. While the survey results implied implied that at-home workouts could overtake the popularity of gyms for good, this hasn't proved to be the case – to the detriment of Peloton.

The exercise equipment company has faced a rocky few months, despite demand for its bikes and treadmills rocketing during the pandemic. In January 2022, it was announced that Peloton was pausing production due to poor sales and high prices.

The following month, the business went one step further and laid-off 2,800 workers in a bid to save $800 million (£587m) annually. Despite expectations to the contrary, it seems people are renewing their gym membership after all, leaving home-exercise brands pedalling to keep up. Pictured is Peloton co-founder John Foley, who announced his resignation as CEO in February 2022.

When mass gatherings were banned at the start of the pandemic, the events industry was hit hard. The cancellation of 10 major tech conferences during the pandemic, including the Mobile World Congress and SXSW, translated to a staggering loss of more than $1.1 billion (£892m).

Statistics from a report released by the Business Visits & Events Partnership in September 2021 revealed that the UK events sector, which had been worth £70 billion ($93.8bn) pre-pandemic, had experienced a £57 billion ($76.4bn) loss due to restrictions. The research also suggested that 126,000 jobs had been cut as a result.

Around the world, the industry's recovery is likely to be slow and painful, especially as many companies are still working from home and successfully running meetings and conferences online.

Almost two years on from the start of the pandemic, major companies including Meta (previously Facebook) and Twitter have shifted to a hybrid-working model that will enable employees to work from home permanently. This is also likely to impact conventions and meetings going forward.

Looking further ahead, the potential dawn of Web 3.0 and the Metaverse – which Meta has pumped billions of dollars into – could one day make in-person conferences completely redundant. 

Demand for new ships has slumped – and not just because of downturns in the cruise and ferry industries. Rather, orders for containers and oil tankers have decreased as well.

Shipyards will not receive new orders from cruise ship operators until 2025, according to Piero Moncheroni, project manager at the Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA). 

Europe's maritime industry has been hit hard and, according to industry body SEA Europe, the continent's shipbuilders will "feel the real negative consequences [of] the COVID-19 outbreak more acutely in the medium and long-term".

Now read about the industries that are tipped to boom after coronavirus.