When do we travel again?

Human curiosity and globalization guarantees that mankind continues to travel. It's not the question of if, but when. It is true the travel industry needs to reinvent itself with sustainable efforts while also guaranteeing the safety and good experiences. Nevertheless, traveler numbers are expected to increase in the long run, when we overcome the COVID challenges. Here are my personal reflections based on what I have observed in the past months.

Current challenges have led to new paradigms in both business and leisure travel. International travel has reduced to bare minimum, due to international restrictions and efforts to control the virus spread. This has led many travel services at brink of bankruptcy. So when will we see international travel to return and what needs to occur in order that to happen?

National government actions

First, the local governments must secure the safety and infrastructure to allow international travel. There needs to be criteria to open the borders for international travelers: we are seeing many countries using national health agencies to define infection rate of origin country as the determining factor. The infection/100,000 people is one of them. Originally it was partially a political decision based on state emergency regulation, but recently many countries face legal issues, as they never made laws regulating pandemia of this scale. Now, more governments are passing the decision power to health officials to avoid political outcries.

Nationally, countries look for the reproduction rate and try to get it well below R>1. This means one infected person infects less than one other person, thus overall infected population keeps decreasing. We have many countries and locations with positive news on reproduction rates; while others have acute crisis; and some have the scare of the second wave.

Second critical component is finding safe and reliable vaccination. Many countries are racing to purchase early vaccinations while it may require some months before we truly feel vaccination can fight the virus effectively. There are many positive signs but work continues.

Third factor is commercial. Countries relying on tourism are losing hundreds of billions of income. This creates problems for the commercial sector. Almost all countries suffer from country shut-downs creating financial crisis and future unemployment rates increase.

Political factors cannot be ignored wither. Credibility of governments to protect their people and national election timings will undoubtedly have an impact on decision making, whether countries admit that or not. This is the fight of saving lives on one hand, and the livelihoods of the people on the other. This ethical dilemma requires leadership and open discussion with many parties to make decisions supported by the people.

National healthcare capacity and availability will also play a role. Countries with strong health care system can absorb and manage peaks better than countries with less capacity. This may influence the decision made on how much risk and what criteria the international travelers will have.

Finally, other countries' action will often be reviewed before opening borders. Even if the criteria is met, many countries look unilateral agreement to open borders to create travel bubbles.

National infrastructure readiness

When legal access is granted the next area is national infrastructure. International travel requires hotels, restaurants and local transportation service to be available. These are basic services most international travelers require at destination. We talk more of the criteria of these service providers later in this article. Main point is that many companies require government funding in the short term to assure the business continuity and capability to serve travelers when they need the services.

Countries with accessible and trustworthy healthcare is another trust factor. This applies for leisure and even more importantly to business travelers. Companies have duty of care so they likely want to limit business travel to countries, unless they can assure their safety.

Many government offices availability have been impacted too. Passport services and other documents like visas are still required as always. Countries must assure the availability and fast processing times. This is not an easy task if country shut-down has created a backlog of request from travelers. Government need new ways and automation to speed up their processing to meet accumulated need.

Social distancing is demanded in many countries. This creates new requirements for all service providers where they may need to serve smaller number of people with same fixed cost base. This has impact on profitability. Most service providers have tried for years to maximize their utilization rates (seats, rooms...) and now they are asked to operate with only partial utilization capacity.

Border control, information and operations are also a consideration. How do you organise border control, and keep travelers informed on border openings when things change on weekly levels?

Service Providers

Service providers are airlines, hotels, restaurants, car rentals and all other companies serving the travelers. Airlines must have open air space with airports functioning serving both the travelers and the service providers. All staff needs to be trained for hygiene requirements and guiding travelers to minimize the risks. Social distancing stickers, hand sanitizers, face mask usage and many other considerations are new and need reminding to keep travelers safe.

Disinfection services of fleets, vehicles and premises are also important. All companies want people to be safe and build the trust on their services. All these new regulations, guidelines and costs are happening at the same time when capacity restrictions apply.

Restaurants need also look beyond safety. They need to assure their supply chain to operate and deliver safe and clean ingredients while on premises dining is also seeing more delivery based business models. Companies need to find fast solutions to digitize their offering and have real-time logistics to serve people with new ways.

For international leisure travelers, the destination attractions are also important. Having access to beaches, museums, events and all the other places has also been reason to travel. Without them, what is the point of travel?

Travel technology companies

Pandemia is huge challenge and opportunity for technology providers. Most tech companies are hit by travel bans too, as many companies provide transaction based business model. When travel happens, the service provider pay tech companies to run the back-end services for them. Without travel, there is no payments.

When airlines or hotels don't have travelers, everyone faces financial pressure.On the other hand, the transactional business model is a blessing over in-house tech development as the fixed cost of in-house tech remains while tech vendor model with transactions does not. It is interesting to see how the business models evolve already to fight against CAPEX vs. OPEX models.

Bio-metric and touchless technology is on the rise. Sensor based tools with touchless functions are critical. In stead of passing passports and tickets from hand to hand, remote readers are on the rise. Same applies to temperature checks and all other services to minimize physical contact. Already now many airports and service providers are having these tools available.

Content distribution with changing environment is a must. And when changes happen the disruption management to support travelers is critical. How do you re-book traveler for new flights and hotels is critical. Furthermore, travelers want to be assured if cancellations happen, they can reschedule or get a refund. In the past, only higher fares (flexible or business bookings) have come with this option but now they are demanded by all travelers to keep people confident they don't lose their money. We are already seeing many companies to give these guarantees to build trust among their travelers.

Maybe surprisingly, at the time of reduced profits, many service providers offer discounted prices. This is to receive cash-in despite the short term hit on profits. There are lots of unused capacity that companies try to fill. With right technology, companies can sell additional (ancilliary) services.

Customer communication throughout the journey is more important than ever. Pre-trip, during and after-trip communication minimizes traveler concerns. Today the traveler challenge is that most service providers use email or apps, but they are not consolidated. So traveler perspective they still need to open many apps to understand what is happening. This service provider centric model is facing challenges. Travelers are getting familiar with Amazon, Netflix and many other services where all of their data and history is in one place. Good traveler experience has been on demand already before virus spread, but now it has increased even higher in the priority. technology providers can solve this but only with help of service providers collaboration.

Summary

I went to lengths of discussing the WHAT without answering my original question. The domestic travel is already happening, maybe with limited numbers but still. International travel is still low compared to pre-COVID world. International travel will return when governments, national infrastructure, service providers and technology providers work together. When they have measures in place to monitor and minimize health risk and disruptions. Single player in travel industry cannot change things. All parties must collaborate simultaneously to make travel bounce back.

This article was written in time of COVID crisis (Aug 2020). The writer works in travel industry and these views are personal views and do not represent any official or company views.