COVID-19 and ‘Humans of the Travel Industry’

Do you remember taking an impromptu flight to your best friend’s place just to surprise him/her on their birthday? Or renting a 4-wheeler on a late Friday night for your gang for a road trip to ‘God-knows-where’? Or maybe you remember planning a family trip to ‘the city of beach’. Or your last hiking trip to ‘the snowy mountain village’ with your college buddies? Well, if you are reading this, now you do! And now that you remember here’s an uncomfortable question - What would you be willing to give up RIGHT NOW to have the luxury of travelling in a non-COVID world again?

A LOT has happened over the last 14 months. A pandemic surpassing million years of human immune system evolution has led the most developed of the nations into lockdowns. Businesses, and as a matter of fact, entire industries have been forced to evolve to ensure survival. Those who couldn’t evolve or adopt are either now counting their days or merely helplessly waiting at the mercy of the pandemic. And it goes without saying that the travel industry is no exception.

The Indian Ministry of Tourism released the following figures in

'Brief Write-up on Tourist Inflows to India during 2020'

.

Right before a nation of ~1.4Bn people went into a never-witnessed-before lockdown in March 2020, the FTAs graph showed an obvious sharp negative delta of ~60%. Although the same data for Indian internal tourism is not available yet, one can expect a similar month wise trend in the first quarter of 2020.

100 days of -100%

What did this ‘negative delta of 60%’ mean to anyone? To a regular hotel owner whose primary clientele is international tourists, it meant a reduction of 60% revenue/income. To inbound airline operators, it could have meant a similar reduction in the number of flights and as a result an obvious similar reduction in revenue. To an ordinary artisan in the Mall Road of an Indian hill station, it meant a (⅔)rd lesser income in that month. And, if we were to guess right, this -60% had further gone down to -100% for close to 100 more days till the country unlocked properly. Yes, the industry witnessed (close to) 100 days of -100% revenue!

Unlocking of the industry

As history has it, humans have given a tough fight to every damn thing that has come in its way of extended existence on the planet. COVID proved to be no exception. Extensive investments in medical research and world wide collaborative governance have accelerated our fate out of the pandemic’s control. And ‘humans of the travel industry’ as we put it, have a role to play in this!

Large number of hotels became centres for quarantining and treating those who were affected. Airlines and railways came to rescue and extended their full support for medical transportation as well as transportation of essentials. They left no stones unturned in uniting people separated by borders with their homes. Railways even converted the coaches of the train into COVID wards for isolation and medical treatment of those affected. An impressively innovative step!

As the nation started to unlock, many hotels and hostels adopted the concept of offering ‘workations’ or ‘staycations’ i.e. working while on vacation. Availing longer stays in hotels/hostels in the remotest scenic places but with proper internet connectivity has become a new normal. Such tourism is growing with people feeling the need to step out of their homes and fight anxiety that they have developed as an outcome of extended stays indoors.

Reducing contact from unsanitized places and social distancing has led to another interesting concept gaining popularity - luggage storage. Preferred by people travelling for a day or two to any place and not wanting to stay in unsanitized places overnight, the idea of storing luggage in cloakrooms is gaining traction.

CloakBuddy

is such an Indian startup which is offering distributed secure cloakroom spaces across various cities. People are liking the idea of discovering cloakrooms near them on their mobiles and stashing their luggage to roam around freely. People travelling for medical tourism or business purposes are also finding the service useful. Not having to stay at any hotel reduces exposure to hotel staff significantly. Such innovative steps are the need of the hour to accelerate our race against COVID. As we progress further, we will have to be cautious and minimise the spread of the virus through our actions. But our work is also unavoidable. Startups like CloakBuddy offer a good trade off here.

As we desperately race towards this new post-COVID age, time shall register what has changed for the world!