Insights July 16, 2020

A bright post-pandemic future? Tips for the travel and hospitality industry

By Living Word

Countries in lockdown, borders closed, flights suspended and restaurants shut. There’s no denying that the travel and hospitality sector has been one of the hardest hit by Covid-19. But is it all doomed? We certainly don’t think so – and we’ve found some convincing tips to help the travel and hospitality sector survive the crisis.

If you look at the SARS and H1N1 outbreaks, you’ll see that normalcy was restored in the travel sector relatively quickly. Similarly, wanderlust urges are expected to return in the not too distant future this time around too. To some extent, there’s already evidence of this. For example, research by Love Home Swap recently revealed that Brits are already booking trips abroad, as far afield as the US despite current restrictions. But does this mean business as usual for travel and hospitality businesses? Let’s take a look at how travel and hospitality businesses can survive the pandemic.

Marketing efforts?

Offering free rebooking for the near future and driving direct bookings through your website, while waiving the use of online travel agents, are generally thought of as good ways to start. Instead of cutting the marketing budget, businesses should focus on rerouting their marketing efforts, while targeting current customers and domestic markets. The use of loyalty programmes and relaxed cancellation policies will foster customer trust and might make advance bookings in the current landscape more likely.

Another important pillar of future success is a well-thought-out branding strategy. Update your website, review budgets and focus on translation and transcreation services. Localised content can really improve your global online and offline presence – especially in the travel and hospitality industry. This could also include the use of multilingual AI chatbots on your website – a helpful, easy-to-use tool for customers to find answers to their questions, which might convince them to proceed with a booking. After all, if you can communicate and engage with global travellers in their native languages, you might bounce back even stronger than initially thought.

Cutting prices?

When the crisis hit, many companies were quick to give out discounts, cut their prices and reduce employee numbers to protect from revenue loss, which of course makes a lot of sense. But as many experts have pointed out, cutting rates may only have a short-term impact and doesn’t drive demand –and when recovery starts, it might be difficult to increase the prices again.

According to industry watchers, the hotel and travel industry should focus on a robust revenue management strategy to support operations over the long-term. Put simply: it’s time to plan ahead and use the spare time accordingly. The report The Impact of Swine Flu (2009 H1N1) On the Tourism Market, states that hotels with a strong brand image and loyal customers that increased their market expenditure did well, while hotels that focused their efforts on cutting costs and reducing prices in fact performed the worst. Food for thought, right?

This example shows that it would be wise to use the current spare time well, rather than sitting around waiting for restrictions to lift. If you decide to focus on localisation as part of your crisis communication strategy, we would be more than happy to help.