Travel is no longer a privilege, but a right: Prof Dev
While speaking at the FICCI webinar on 'Future of Travel, Hospitality and Tourism Industry and the Way Forward', Professor Chekitan S Dev, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, suggests that viewing the Covid-19 crisis as an opportunity will help the travel and hospitality industry learn new ways to survive and thrive in a 'better normal' world.
Serving as the harbinger of good news, Chekitan S Dev, Professor, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, opines that travel, hospitality and tourism businesses, which seem to be headed towards a grim future, will definitely recover and will recover fully.
Based on his 41 years of experience of having carefully studied businesses and having lived through many crises in his lifetime, Prof Dev was sharing his perception of the global impact of the pandemic on the travel, hospitality and tourism businesses at the FICCI webinar.
At a time when business prospects seem to be going downhill, Prof Dev says he's confident of a complete recovery of the sector as travel is today no longer a privilege available to a few, rather a right, demanded by many. "We will get back to where we were and more," says the professor.
Shift in demand curve
However, he exercises a word of caution to say that recovery to 2019 levels is going to take a lot longer than most people think as he explains why, "As more and more leisure travelers discover the joys of their immediate surroundings and more businesses conduct their affairs virtually, there will be a shift in the demand curve for travel. Data tells us that while resort hotels are doing better than the rest of the industry, vacation homes are doing better than standard hotels and drive destinations are doing better than fly destinations. Virtual interactions have exploded, with 300 million participants, if Zoom were a country, it would be the world's fourth largest. Beyond these top line trends, the rest gets pretty foggy. With the summer holidays over, the virus is surging around the world. And with cities like Minsk, Rome, Bangkok and Philadelphia, engulfed in demonstrations, the near future looks very bleak."
