Defining The Next Generation of The Tourism Industry

We are indeed living in interesting times. Times that will make for amazing stories to our grandchildren. The last time the world saw something so globally encompassing would have probably been World War 2, if not WW 1.

There is no question that the virus has been a major disruption to lives across the world on every level. The virus is blind to colour, race or religion. Every business, small or large, has been affected in one way or the other. Even Mother Nature has been affected, positively for a change. The skies are cleaner, rivers clearer, the animals are roaming freely. This is the utopia so many of us wished for. Young Greta Thunberg must be very happy to see her dream come true, even for a moment.

Factories are shut. Shopping has stopped. Parks are closed. So much has changed in our daily lives, but the one industry that has been hit the hardest is tourism. We are a segment of the global economy that is directly involved with the movement of people. Now that has stopped, our lives in this industry have come to an uncomfortable screeching halt.

Even in the darkest hours of the crises of the past two decades did not tourism get so affected. 9/11, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorism attacks, Gulf war, SARS, MERS – so much has happened in the times of my adulthood, yet tourism continued in one way or the other. Today, it’s a surreal world. The world was never designed to have all the aeroplanes sit on the ground, hotels closed, kitchens shut.

So, the impact is very simple – our industry has been hit so very hard. The global travel industry has been obliterated, annihilated, wiped-out. Even if it’s temporary, the effects will be felt for years to come.

But perhaps this is the reset button we all needed. To pause and understand what we have become. I know we will come out of this crisis. I know we will learn from what has happened and we will arrive at a new normal in the future. I know tourism will come back. In these, I have no doubts.

But I also hope that we will take this pause as a moment of reflection. Unfortunately along this journey of learning and introspection, there will be many who will be cast aside by fate. Not everyone will be able to weather this storm. Charles Darwin perhaps said it the best – “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

This is what will define the next generation of the tourism industry. Some will do well. Some will revive. Some will not. Such is the treatise of the Survival of the Fittest.

The last many years saw organizations push the objective of growth through acquisitions and mergers. We saw many a travel and logistics company grow through pure financial valuations. We saw paper numbers outstrip real brick and mortar values. Now we will see who had substance behind all the talk. What will happen to the AirBnBs, UBERs, Expedia's of the world? How will they make themselves relevant in a new economy where the physical sense of touch and feel may be so much more important than the past. Will the need to speak face to face before booking travel come back to where we want it to be? Can the travel industry now make the case for relevancy in using a professional agent? Time will tell. Opportunities do exist.

In India, we are now weeks into our lockdown. Personally, I am enjoying a part of it. For the first time in my life, the ‘Rat Race’ has stopped. There is no pressure to win business. No pressure of losing business. No deadlines to meet. No competition to hound you. There is a surreal sense of peace that we have never felt before. Yes, there is fear and discomfort on how we will survive and what comes next. But please also appreciate how beautiful the world is and what we have been missing in our race to the top.

In this downtime, we have an opportunity to enhance our individual skills. Learn a new language. Pick up a hobby. In my company have been using the lockdown period productively. We have training webinars every day bringing in new product providers to showcase what they can do as well as hotels to update our team. Various teams are meeting every day just to keep in touch and to discuss new products to be ready for when business restarts. Our team is standing together, united and hopeful of a better tomorrow.

I have been asked what is next and when is next. I do expect the situation in India to resolve faster than the West. The checks our government put in place easily on have worked to an extent. One cannot predict when the airlines across the world will be able to get back to speed. When hotels can restart and when governments will start processing visas. There will be new rules of travelling from one country to another and those paradigm shifts are yet to be discussed.

In my opinion, I expect domestic and regional travel to restart in the next 3-6 months. I expect higher end international travel to start in the Last Quarter of this year. Man is a wandering animal. This is in our DNA. Even if you go back centuries you will see how humans have always travelled. So, this will come back. I expect a stronger expansion in Quarter 1 and 2 of 2021. The pent-up demand will be strong and there lie opportunities.

The Indian industry needs to use this downtime to reinvent its product offering. Inbound operators need to find new ways of selling our country. Hotels need to refine its service delivery. States needs to compete with each other to attract the eyeballs of the traveller. There is a lot of work we need to do as an industry. Retraining and retooling are the calls of the day.

Short term, the government needs to understand that Business Survival is must take precedence over all else. Only if we survive the next few months with no business can we even talk about revival? The priorities of our industry associations are very clear – help us survive first.

What I recommend for India is for the tourism ministry to reset all their old systems and policies. Look at the world afresh and create new strategies. Retire ‘Incredible India’ and restart afresh. The world has changed. How people will travel will change. The reasons to travel will change. This is a whole new world not only for India but for every one of our competing destinations. If we assume that our systems from the past will work in the future, then we may be in for a rude shock.

Listen up folks – this is not the end of the world. This is a speedbump on the highway of this journey what we call life. Sh*t happens folks. If you are going to sit and mope about the misery we are in, then you will go into a self-fulfilling spiral of pain. Look up. Look at new opportunities. Look at a future which will most certainly be different. But it is a future and that future for you has yet to be written. You have some control over your destiny. It is time for all of us to collectively to take this challenge head-on and tell the world that the Indian tourism industry is the strongest, most resilient and most innovative tourism fraternity in the world. We will survive and we will be back!