The Future of Hospitality and Tourism Industry

[Music]

hello everybody

and welcome to this edition of ted talks

with tedx narvarmag

head of practice tourism with dolma

consulting uk

and i’m here to share some of my ideas

on how i feel things are going to go

moving forward during this term this

pandemic

it’s been going on now for about a year

and a half

the hospitality tourism industry has

taken a major beating

you find airlines grounded whole fleets

grounded

hotels empty and of course there’s a lot

of you know people being laid off and we

don’t know how the future is going to be

it is definitely very very uncertain

during these uncertain times however

we also got to see a lot of things

changing

probably forever one of them of course

is people

the hospitality and tourism industry is

all about people it’s people-to-people

contact

and from there we move to a contactless

world

and that is what this pandemic came in

and made a big difference too

however we’ve had our spate of lockdowns

countries are still under lockdown

people are still bottled up at home and

the good

thing is that once this is over and it

will get over very very soon

we will find everybody willing to get

out of the house

take that holiday make that trip travel

somewhere

and what have you and that is what we

look forward to

but however it’s the going is going to

be very very tough

we started this this whole thing from

2020

about work from home and that became the

norm

a lot of companies and corporates could

afford to do that with their manpower

sitting at home logging into machines

and doing their work

but unfortunately in the hospitality

industry in the tourism business

a lot of that work could not be done

from home and it needed

people-to-people contact and because of

that

what happened people stop making those

contacts they stop sitting on those

flights

they stop going to those hotels and they

stop moving out

and traveling to those things what

started off of course is

a lot of private holidays people get

into their car

travel to a nearby destination be there

with friends and family

and a lot of small hotels and resorts

started doing well

because they were small we didn’t want

to go to those big places

so how is this going to come back and

what is the difference which is going to

happen

and that is really the big big challenge

to travel

you know international airlines so many

of them have more than 85

90 of their fleets grounded and it’s not

so easy to quickly start an airline back

now when the business starts coming back

you need all those aircrafts to go

through the air worthiness checks

those are expensive there might be a

huge amount of unpaid leases

and those leaseholders need to be paid

all that money before you can fly any

one of those aircrafts off the ground

pilots the the main guys the engineers

they all go undergo regular

certifications maybe twice a year

and definitely once a year many of those

would have got

lapsed so many of them have been without

jobs on furlough

might have already gone off and moved

into alternate careers

so it’s not so easy to start all that

off hotels might have cut down inventory

they would have shut down rooms they

would have

closed down parts of their business laid

off

huge amount of employees and when we

start seeing how is the business going

to come back

they really don’t have so much of data

to work on you know revenue management

in hotels a very very important function

and they always predict how it’s going

to go and based upon that the budget is

made

now that is always based on past figures

if you look at the figures of 2019

and you look at the figures of 2020 you

really don’t have

too much to go on so what does it get

back to a gut feel

is that how it’s going to is that how

the future is going to be

so that this is really where if we need

to do a rethink

do a step back and really change the way

we look at this whole business otherwise

it’s not going to work

so what do we do next how do we go

forward

so i’ve met a lot of experts spoken to

several people

attended so many zoom calls and net

seminars

spoken at several of several of them and

and then

i thought to myself how is this going to

go forward

so what i’d like to put forward is the

taking the right

step what is the step the s stands for

safety today the primary concern which

any person would have is how safe am i

when i’m going to travel so this is a

paramount importance

now earlier went to the hotels when we

spoke about safety

it was usually something called fire

life safety and food hygiene

and for that we had certifications and

various kind of things for airlines of

course there’s a hugely

mandated security you go through

security you sit even the seat belt

fastening is a security process

and that is completely checked and then

when you visit

places of tourist or historical interest

there are a lot of safety precautions

there

don’t lean across the bar take care wear

protective clothing or jackets

if you’re going you know parasailing or

something and that’s what safety was

about

but but if you see all the safety was

regarding keeping your body safe it was

about protecting the body

and now it’s not about just protecting

the body

all that remains but now you also

protect inside the body

and you have to ensure that your safety

processes are in place

so that a guest or a customer who visits

any of your businesses

does not catch an infection or fall sick

and that has now become the biggest

challenge all over the world

and as such as tourism organizations

businesses connected to tourism

if we do not take these all these steps

no one’s going to visit us

nobody’s going to take a risk of falling

sick we’ve all heard the harder stories

especially with phase 2 of kovid of so

many

houses within our friends families

people you know who left this world

just because we could not contain the

virus and that is why safety has become

so much important so in that various

things happened a lot of things

have taken place and you need to

critically look at your own business

and see are we socially distanced or not

two things come to my mind

one is you know social distancing very

very important

and the second is how do we prevent

infection

from being present in the atmosphere and

how do we get rid of it

one of the most successful stories in

tourism during these last one year

has been the maldives and the reason

they’ve been so successful is of course

you went there with a pcr test you got

down they took a test they would test

everybody

but most of their tourism was island

tourism

you went to a resort in an island and

everybody lived on that island and you

were the only guest going there

so once you’ve done your test you

cleared and they just said don’t wear

your mask

there is no need of any kind of

restrictions

and you had a super holiday just like it

was back in the old days

and that is what a guest would look

forward to

if your institution is safe if your

flights are going to be safe

and how are you going to do it whether

you take care of the filters

and when you look into hotels

restaurants you know how

good is your room getting cleaned and

there are a lot of you know

whole standards around this which are

being done but then comes to a place

where you take your mask off

which is in the restaurant and how is

that going to be

a lot of you know pressures now

to sit outdoors have fresh air roaming

through

and not have air conditioned places

where the same air circulating again and

again and again

if that is there you need to put in

filters maybe

the same standard as that of an aircraft

which weeds out

viruses bacterias not just dust and

moisture

so if you have those great those places

are going to come up and we need to tell

that to all our guests

make sure that it’s not just our guests

but also our employees

the people who are tending to all your

guests how safe are they

are they coming to work with worry on

their forehead that for my livelihood am

i going to fall sick

and that has happened a lot so or how is

it going to go forward

where we take care of them and we take

care of our guests

the second part of step is t which is

technology

the world has gone digital in fact one

good

silver lining of this pandemic is that

what would take a digital adoption

or putting in technology in our lives

which would take four to five years has

happened in less than one year

today everybody understand bar codes

they understand qr codes understand how

to scan it

and they understand how to order

everything of a mobile phone

now how technology enabled is your

business

many organizations went ahead and put in

technology

but that work parallel with the human

being so you might check into an

aircraft

but you still have to go to the counter

to give your baggage and get a physical

boarding pass

so all that needs to change and

technology needs to get inducted

people you need to give people choices

people don’t like to be told

what what they can do they want it to be

something which is very very easy for

them to use and that’s what the e for

step comes in

how easy is it is it’s it has to be very

simple

and uncomplicated for consumers and for

customers

and that is why it is very very

important that how do you um

uncomplicate all these steps if you make

it very cumbersome

people are not just going to use it let

me give you a very simple example

you want to book a flight you maybe you

want to fly from destination a to

destination b

and where do you buy your air ticket

from chances are you go to make my trip

or booking.com or you go to one of these

kind of sites

because it’s far easy to navigate they

already have all your data

rather than going to that airline site

so you do use that airline but you don’t

use

that airline website because it’s quite

cumbersome you load a whole lot of data

you have to go through various choices

and you don’t do that you want to you go

down to an aggregator he tells you

you want to go from point a to point b

these are the cheapest fares available

on abc

sites you go to those sites you fill in

destination give your credit card and

after that it’ll ask you

what is your name what kind of what’s

your nationality

what are the passport details what how

much luggage you want to book in

and it and it’s so easy and they keep

that data the next time you go it says

hello paul

how are you doing today uh and then when

i’m kind of

about to pump in and then it gives me

two three letter destination pop-ups i

think these are the deals which are

available

and they keep coming back to me of

course it’s my choice i can turn that

service off but i like to keep it on

i like to know what kind of deals are

happening so that i can keep planning my

future travels where future holidays

and that is where technology is become

making it easy

and helps to engage with with customers

today

you know you’re on a you’re in a hotel

you’re already in your room

what do you like to have for breakfast

what are the choices available

any hotel can make its own app it’s very

easy

i find you know hotel chains have apps

you know merits the ihes

and the hyatts they all have apps but

individual hotels don’t have apps

because customers want to know about

these properties

those days of iptv are gone where you

went through huge large advertising

and you and you hit it on maybe slide

seven or slide eight the kind of

restaurant

you wanted and by the time you’re

reading it is already moved to slide

nine

and then you’re looking at the swimming

pool which maybe you don’t want so is

that app available

can we engage can we make a booking can

i make decide by

menu can i give a time when i’m going to

be there

and that’s how easy and uncomplicated

you need to make it

you know today most hotels have rfid

locks

but you need to upgrade the technology

and give the key at the digital key in

the

guest phone so when the customer

provides all this data you’ve got

everything

why does he need to go to a front office

stand in a queue socially distanced

wait for some time then somebody in a

mask wearing a white overall hood

is going to give him a key and say this

is your sanitized key

hey use technology you don’t need it you

let him get an rfid key

on his mobile phone and that’s it he

walks into the hotel

imagine the welcome message say say dear

paul welcome back to the hotel

and here is your key i just walk up to

my room and it gives me directions

i go straight to my room push my phone

onto the door lock and bring it opens

imagine that’s how easy it has to be and

that is where

things are going to go forward and make

a large difference

and the last part is just p of the step

s for safety t for technology

e for ease and p is processes

now all this will not happen if we do

not make water tight processes

they need to be well thought out all

eventualities need to be coming

teams need to work together to put all

these processes together

and then as a as a customer i need to

ask somebody something

do i pick up a phone and make a call

somebody needs to pick up that call

can i send a text message and somebody

responds back well somebody needs to be

there at end of the line to respond back

and the best part is that today they

don’t need to be sitting on your

premises

they can be sitting right at home on

duty getting back to consumers and

customers and their requests

and so many things opportunities come up

where you know maybe your rates are

going to be low for a period of time

because it’s competitiveness and

business is low

but you can have opportunities to upsell

and cross-sell

and give that customer a year really

superior

experience and that is where how the

processes will come in

and they need to be watertight they need

to be looked into

and completely redesigned from step up

and only when we are going to be able to

do that

will we be able to go ahead take the

right step

and step up for your guests for your

customers

for your business and for this industry

and wish you all the best

i’m sure it’s going to come back and

will boom again

thank you very much