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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.
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)
An opportunity to engage. (April, 2020)
What probably challenged me the most was reducing social contacts and interactions with friends or family members. After that long time I even started missing going to university, while working from home in front of your laptop. (October, 2020)
We are worried that people will be scared for a long time and will not travel because they will be afraid of infection or possible quarantine after returning from the trip. I'm afraid of losing my job. (August, 2020)
I like the idea of starting a very much different way of tourism after this and a lot of other things. (April, 2020)
My joy at work in the tourism industry. (June, 2020)
We do not need special resources, only normal conditions that will allow travel. (August, 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 protests of stay in place orders. (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)