Life After Lockdown: Impact on the Way We Travel

Since coronavirus started spreading in the Wuhan region of China and later it has spread to dozens of countries around the globe, affecting almost every aspect of individual and their behaviour to business, finances and economy.

The pandemic is inevitably having an enormous impact on the travel industry, restricted traveling guidelines to canceling long pre-booked reservations, ranging from hotel and cruise ship quarantines to airlines halting flights in some regions.

The way we travel will surely have some impact on humans too as we won’t travel so frequently and plan holidays or long vacations much ahead in advance for quite a long period of time. Also, that carefree attitude of ours will change even while traveling as we would be more concerned about hygiene and the way we touch anything or meet and greet anyone.

Worldwide impact

Overall, the tourism industry accounts for 10% of the world’s GDP and jobs. The whole tourism value chain across the globe like hotels, travel agents, tour operations, destinations, restaurants, family entertainment venues, and air, land and sea transportation has been hit badly.

As per industry chamber CII (Confederation of Indian Industry), this is one of the worst crises ever to hit the Indian tourism industry impacting all its geographical segments – inbound, outbound and domestic, almost all tourism verticals – heritage, leisure, adventure, cruise, corporate and niche segments.

With Asia being the most affected continent, the coronavirus pandemic is putting up to 50 million jobs in the global travel and tourism sector at risk, with travel likely to slump by a quarter this year, the World Travel and Tourism Council reported.

Also, once the situation is better, it could take up to 10 months for the industry to recover. Of all the sectors, airlines and cruise ships were currently being more impacted than hotels. 

The technological revolution that brought us closer together by advancing globalization has made travel and tourism easy and affordable but is helpless in halting the effects a virus could show.

Taking a complete picture of tourism losses is difficult, as the data changes as quickly as the virus spreads. If the pandemic continues for several more months, the World Travel and Tourism Council, the trade group representing major global travel companies, estimates a global loss of 75 million jobs and $2.1 trillion in revenue. 

Indian Tourism Scenario

With India canceling all visas, the chamber said the effect “will be worse”. It further claimed that the forward bookings for the inbound season of October 2020-March 2021 which should have started picking are all muted. These are showing highly discouraging signs with cancellations of important global travel marts which are marketplaces for contracting for the next season.

There were advanced cancellations and almost no forward booking pipelines for the holiday season. Only corporates were flying and that too only on highly essential same-day travel. Most of the MNCs are advising work from home, stifling travel.

On suspension of visas, MakeMyTrip Group CEO Rajesh Magow mentioned that the period between February till the end of March is typically a lean period because of exam season but we are seeing a demand slowdown for the upcoming vacation season as well. 

Travel now would be no longer be just a getaway but would be a serious responsibility to come back or bring back our family safe with yourself. It will be fun but with an added dose of precaution.

Over to you

The travel industry has witnessed a severe impact as many countries have placed lockdowns and restricted inbound and outbound flights. These restrictions have put an end to almost all business and vacation trips.