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