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The 2020 pandemic and previous years’ overtourism issues showed us both the benefits, the relevance, and the limits of the tourism, hospitality and leisure industries for society. We cannot foresee the future, but we can listen to challenges and start developing solutions.
So far we have received more than 900 responses in which these questions have been discussed::
In the name of the global tourism family, many thanks to every single one of you for the inspiring feedback. Your replies are summarized in the sections below.
Don't forget to share YOUR insights (for the first time or again, with new observations):
The 10 quotes below are updated every few minutes and elephant word-clouds are recalculated regularly based on your new survey entries. You have to refresh the page or revisit us every so often to see the changed content.
Travelling becomes very high risk for health. (May, 2020)
Evasion from daily routine. (April, 2020)
The closure of the kindergarten during the shutdown was defenitely the biggest challenge for my student life. (October, 2020)
I do worry about small businesses and tour guides who are already dormant during the winter months and are waiting for the summer season to accumulate their earnings, just that this summer likely won't come. But at the macro level, tourism should return to its old path. How long it will take is difficult to predict. What I can predict, however, is that, like anything, this crisis will bring some changes. There will now be a lot of room for innovation in current work processes. (April, 2020)
I don't see any problems with the pre-corona tourism-industry, that this initiative could effectively address (exploitation, overtourism, etc.). Generally speaking, maybe concentrate more on regional government and companies to initiate changes. Make tourism more locally attractive to avoid long distance travel. Maybe also put policies (emission tax for flights / subsidize local sustainable businesses) in place to achieve ecologically sustainable tourism (camping is making a huge comeback, while flight destinations struggle). (June, 2020)
Social (online) support! As mentioned previously, providing social interaction through technology and media platforms greatly helps and keeps everyones mind busy while providing social interaction to ease the lockdown induced loneliness. I would also be able to provide the resource of shopping for the elderly in my community, which I have done twice this previous month, in order to allow the elderly to stay home and get safely delivered food and not have to possible expose themselves to the virus. Anything we can do to help everyone struggling to get through this time. (April, 2020)
Multi sector collaboration to collect data. (April, 2020)
I am from a small town in Virginia/Tennessee and one of my favorite restaurants has impressed the community throughout this pandemic. They are an upscale restaurant offering foods from sushi and stir fry to burgers and tacos. Tuesday nights are half price sushi nights- the community's favorite. While the dining area has been closed, they are still offering their deals on their respective nights. By offering their special on delivery and to-go orders, they received as much business as a normal day. To my benefit, once they were overwhelmed with the number of orders in the afternoon, they honored the deal prices the next day to those they couldn't accommodate on Tuesday. They even offered their Tuesday deal on Sundays, as they saw the huge success of it. They have even began to sell gallons of beer and margaritas, pints and quarts of their soups, etc. Things that they don't normally do. The greatest help to the community has been the restaurants ability to buy things such as toilet paper, paper towels, sugar, flour, etc. in bulk and sell at a breakeven price to customers. These are things that are sold out in grocery stores and are in high demand. They are able to take advantage of their suppliers and help get the community what they need, even without the desire to make a profit off of it. I know that there are many customers and community members that are impressed with the way the restaurant is handling this crisis and are thankful for their efforts! (March, 2020)
The media partly exploit the situation of the pandemic to get attention and generate sales. However, the media is not aware, or perhaps unfortunately they are - even sadder that this hype in the media - can make the population sick. (October, 2020)
Allow free travel insurance, people are afraid to book because they feel the risk to have their trip cancelled. (April, 2020)