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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.
The biggest challenge that the crisis brings with it is the economic aspect. Due to the almost global shutdown of the economy, it is not yet certain how bad the economy will be in the future. Tourism has been hit pretty hard, especially in Tyrol, and will therefore have a heavy loss in occupancy and reservations. How bad it actually gets is still unclear. (June, 2020)
Tourism has been employing me for 25 years. Given that this is a multiplicative activity that is alive and constantly changing, it also brings new challenges. Work in tourism is in all prespectives related to people. Tourist workers are also the best promoters of tourist destinations. (August, 2020)
After COVID-19, we will face challenges in rebuilding trust within our markets that it will be safe to travel again. There might also come other travel trends that do not pay our region the attention. Companies will be economically weaker and might not be able to develop their service and competence, and we might loose the momentum we had where companies were eager to work with sustainability. Many companies might drop prices and stop caring about which clients they get, as long as they get clients. This can be challenging for the general quality level of tourism business in our region. Higher unemployment can lead to emigration from our region, with the result that it will be challenging for the local places to attract new people and for companies to find the right competence. There might be less willingness to contribute to development and marketing of tourism from the public government's side, as they might loose faith in tourism. (May, 2020)
My concerns are that the world we used to know won't be the same after the pandemic. (December, 2020)
Go digital, as much as possible. But how do we earn money on a dogsled tour digital? I am not sure. (April, 2020)
Digital marketing, Consulting, Guests research, Data-driven decisions (May, 2020)
It would be nice to hear more ideas and support from professors at my institution as well as other institutions that are leaders in hospitality/tourism and/or business in how to react in these times (i.e. Cornell, HBS, Michigan State, etc.). (April, 2020)
A very cool best practice I found is placed in Alta Badia. In this summer every hut and restaurant in the mountains is offering the possibility to take away the lunch in a picnic basket. With this service, you don't have to sit down on a table but you can join your meal on a meadow. (June, 2020)
VIPs saying we're all in this together to promote themselves. (April, 2020)
I am really liking the idea about starting over in the field of tourism. I think it's a great idea because the tourism industry has been doing amazing so far for many years and had a lot of profit from different airline companies bringing bilions every year and so on, but I still think that with starting all over we could do even better and make tourism industry better than ever. (March, 2020)