Covid

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Impact on industry

SukritDogra Hospitality Insights wrote:

The ruthless march of COVID-19 throughout the globe is first and foremost a human tragedy, affecting the health of hundreds of thousands of people. The consequences of measures taken worldwide to curb the pandemic are having a growing impact on the global economy. This article aims to offer key highlights on the impact being felt by the industry due to factors including, but not limited to, the migratory nature of the hospitality workforce and the pause on global travel, tourism and restaurant services

Accounting for the unprecedented travel restrictions, the United Nations World Tourism Organization calculated

• Loss of 850 million to 1.1 billion international tourists
• Loss of US$ 910 billion to US$ 1.2 trillion in export revenues from tourism
• 100 to 120 million jobs at risk

It is very hard to tell how this will affect the future, or even what the future of hospitality might look like at all. Things are changing, day-by-day.

Covid, and similar diseases, will always be around and have impact on hospitality, especially:

• Major impact on the profitability of the industry. Two years with very low revenues.
• The impact of changes in consumers behaviour are yet to be seen. Impact on travel in general seems to be limited
• Covid still is around and still brings about lockdown and (travel) rules in some countries
• In operations, especially in hygiene, health issues play an bigger role than before
• The terms of services, cancellations and other (legal) issues are affected. HACCP has a much more prominent role.
• Staff; apart from the customers, missing out on sick staff, staff in quarantaine, or lack of staff has impact.

Though, it turns out, that the industry is resilient and the modifications in hotel's operations have been more limited than expected.

Benchmarks

Of course there is a strong link from the hospitality industry sector hotels, to travel, to the airline industry, to the cruise market, to MICE market, to catering industry (restaurant, bars, casino's etc.). So the future is hard to predict. We do have benchmarks, from the past, which is a totally different situation. The fluctuations are minimum compared to what has happened during Covid. The UNWTO introduced a recovery tracker that might shed some light, but again is only trying to quantify what's going on and is not able to predict.
We can follow the crucial occupancy rate number worldwide in numbers statista, and we see the following overview:

Check the actual occupancy rates of hotels here.

If we compare this to the fluctuations in the past it is all unprecedented. But, again it seems, the industry is resilient. While benchmarking, we should take into account that Covid makes some numbers and statistics unreliable.

New target groups or business models

So, especially now creativity and being innovative and versatility is paramount.
Several reports might help:

• reports like from Deloitte
• COVID survival guide from Hospitality net
• Marketing guide in COVID times
• UK And European Hospitality Industry Will Have To Evolve To Meet New Requirements Of Corporate Travel Industry In The Post-Pandemic Era

The situation is changing all the time, and there is no simple solution. A few elements though to keep in mind:

• Be creative, innovative: look at (basic) needs, look at possibilities the assets offer
• Be versatile, work agile, be flexible
• The direct threat from COVID has diminished, but the focus on health and risks became a more permanent element in our industry

Also check the information on the Benchmarks page.

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