Harmonised approach for revival
The second session of the 4th TRAVTALK Digital Conclave, titled ‘What will the travel restart look like? Managing Customer Experience’, had experts from across the board - NTO, airline and the tour operator - to work on revival in a calibrated manner, how
Echoing a common agenda of joining hands and working together for revival and the future of the travel industry, panellists at the session,
Director - Destination Tourism Development, Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority (RAKTDA);
Chief Customer Officer, SpiceJet and Managing Director, Weldon Tours & Travels, also shared prominently that working towards restoring the consumer confidence to restart travel should be the prime focus apart from the use of Artificial Intelligence in varied segments of the industry.
Mohamed Khater, Kamal Hingorani, Guldeep Singh Sahni,
Sharing his view, Khater said, “Tourism will be always a reality and there is an appetite for travel with a cautious, positive and confident approach from travellers to drive it back. So, we do expect things will be better in the short-term and the long. From our end, Ras Al Khaimah is ready to welcome travellers and ready to implement several campaigns, packages and actions to be ready to work with our travellers either domestically, regionally or internationally.”
Hingorani, on the other hand, said that the perspective of the industry of tackling crisis is in the past. “When 9/11 happened, it impacted the customer confidence across the globe, but prominently impacted the US and Europe. Business was not impacted, but what was hit the most was passenger confidence, which went down across the globe because everybody thought that a machine like an airplane can become a missile anywhere in the world. If it could happen in the US, it can happen anywhere. After
the tragedy, security protocols were rewritten as fear gripped all travellers across the world. The whole world came together, and governments set up a security protocol that has held us in good direction. With a pandemic like COVID-19, the health and safety protocols are again being rewritten. Innovation is undoubtedly the way forward. My fervent request to all my colleagues in the industry is - let us restore public confidence,” he said.
Pitching the thought to work for a better future, Sahni said that we need to look beyond the pandemic now. “It is time to now look at the future. As soon as international flights begin, we would start looking at travellers. Front liners out of that would be VFR and business travellers. We will start looking at people who have a necessity to travel. Once they start, front liners will - Kamal Hingorani
start and then the rest will come along. During such crisis, airlines and hotels had started reaching out to customers directly because they needed to cut costs. With time, they will start looking at more business arms and devising new strategies. They would again want to reach out to tour operators to boost their business, so that more people start selling their products and there is revival in a faster manner,” he said.
Air travel is safe and secure
Asserting that air travel is the safest mode of transport currently, - Guldeep Singh Sahni
revive tourism. “This is something that we, as airlines, cannot do alone. It must come from the entire ecosystem, from the entire tours and travel community, from hotels, from